Character Creation¶
Blitz Eternal: Adventures Beyond the Mists — v0.3 Draft¶
This document covers how a Character is built. Version One ships with pregenerated Characters and does not require any creation at the table. The system below is the target for later versions and is recorded so the pregens are built consistently against it.
Full mechanics for each Class live in their own files under classes/. This document is the overview and the shared framework.
The Axes¶
A Character is built from three light axes at creation:
- Class governs combat: Command Capacity, personal die and Hit Range, the Reads or signature system, Split Cap, and Hit Points.
- Lineage is a mostly-flavor heritage layer.
- Virtues govern non-combat competence: four traits, each with its own tier on the Checks ladder.
Weapon choice is a separate, lighter decision layered on top of Class: it never changes Hit Range, only damage dealt per Hit and a few positional or optional effects. See weapons.md.
A Character begins Guildless. Guild (Thief, Mage, Priest, Bard, Alchemist, Guardians) is a separate layer covering non-combat identity and social role, earned in play rather than chosen at creation. See Advancement below and 05-setting/guilds for the Guilds themselves.
The old First Level Tactic axis has been retired. The class signatures now carry that weight. See retired-mechanics.
Axis One: Class¶
There are eight Classes. Each is defined by two things under the hood: the pattern it Reads in the shared Pool (or an alternative signature system in place of Reads), and its relationship to the Company. That relationship runs from Characters who fight almost entirely on their own dice to Characters who barely fight and instead command many Retainers. These two design axes are internal shorthand; players simply choose a Class.
A Class sets:
- Command Capacity. The Retainers led, as a starting value that rises automatically at fixed Levels. Starting: Chancellor 6, Knight 3, Skirmisher 3, Witch 2, Ranger 2, Warden 1, Errant 0, Squire 0. Maximums are per class; see companies-and-command, Part Two. All provisional.
- Personal die and Hit Range. How many dice the Character adds to the Pool, and which faces hit. Every Class begins play with exactly 1 personal die. A second arrives automatically at the Level its own table names; the Errant and Chancellor are fixed at 1 for longer than the rest and likely cap at 2 rather than 3.
- Signature. Either the Combos it Reads (Pair, Triple, Straight, Set) or a standalone system that occupies the same role (the Witch's Mana, the Squire's Favor, the Ranger's Focus).
- Split Cap. How many Detachments may act in a turn. 2 by default.
- Hit Points. Set per Class by the Level 1 Hit Point table below, before armor. Not a flat number.
- Speed. 5 for every Character as a universal baseline, unmodified by Class. Retainer baseline Speed sits at 4 (6 for a Blade), so an unarmored Character is a step faster than rank-and-file troops by default. Armor (see weapons.md) is the thing that changes this, not Class.
Hit Point baselines¶
A Character's personal Hit Points at First Level are set by Class, before armor. The number runs inverse to how much a Character's Company can soak for them: a class that fights through a large force keeps the fewest Hit Points on its own Card, while a class with little or no Company carries the most.
| Class | Base HP (Level 1) | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Errant | 6 | No Company at all; every hit lands on her own Card. |
| Knight | 5 | Leads a Lance but stands in front of it. |
| Warden | 5 | Only a thin Company; built to be the wall. Reaches 8 in heavy armor. |
| Skirmisher | 4 | Wide, mobile Company soaks most incoming damage. |
| Witch | 4 | Fights from behind a Cabal; survives by position and Wards. |
| Ranger | 4 | Works at range; built to avoid being struck, not to weather it. |
| Squire | 4 | Attaches to a host Company and fights from within its protection. |
| Chancellor | 3 | Largest force in the game; least damage reaches the Character in person. |
Armor adds on top of the base: None +0, Light +1, Medium +2, Heavy +3. So a Warden in heavy armor sits at 8, a Chancellor in light armor at 4. See weapons.md for armor and its other effects.
Retainers have 1 Hit Point on their own Card and take Light armor by default (+1), so a standard Retainer is a 2-Hit-Point figure: two hits and down.
[PLAYTEST] These baselines and the gradient behind them are chosen, not yet confirmed in live combat. The per-class documents each carry the same note.
The Eight Classes¶
| Class | Cmd. Cap. (start) | Signature | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Knight | 3 | Straight, Set (Level 5) | Formation and command; Oaths and Rally hold the line together. |
| Skirmisher | 3 | Triple (Pierce, Level 5) | Scattered companies that never need to hold; strikes the exposed. |
| Warden | 1 | Pair, Straight (Level 5) | The wall the household hides behind; spends tomorrow's dice today. |
| Witch | 2 | Mana | Channels an uncanny power banked from a circle's low dice; curses and battlefield control. |
| Errant | 0 | Pair, Triple | No company, ever; a Blitz chain that climbs until it busts. |
| Squire | 0 | Favor | Attaches to others and gives; never fights for itself. |
| Ranger | 2 | Focus | Patient scout and marksman; certainty earned by going unhit. |
| Chancellor | 6 | Set (Grand Muster) | The general who barely fights; four command effects and the whole army moving at once. |
Detailed mechanics, flavor, worked examples, and growth paths are in classes/knight.md, classes/skirmisher.md, classes/warden.md, classes/witch.md, classes/errant.md, classes/squire.md, classes/ranger.md, and classes/chancellor.md.
Three Classes replace their Reads with a complete standalone signature system rather than reading Combos: the Witch (Mana and casting), the Squire (Favor, Stockpile, Bump), and the Ranger (Focus). This is treated as a full substitute, not a gap.
Axis Two: Lineage¶
A light heritage layer with four options: Human, Elven (includes Part-Elven), Dwarven (includes Part-Dwarven), and Half-Fae (further specified by one of six Heritage Courts). Half-Mist and Mixed were cut; see retired-mechanics.
Lineage carries deliberately narrow mechanical weight. Each of the four grants one narrative permission and one flat +1d6 on a specific category of Check, and nothing more. Lineage never touches Pool size, Hit Range, or Hit Points. Full text, including all six Heritage Courts and their twelve Court-gated Specialties, is in lineage.md.
Axis Three: Virtues¶
Four Virtues cover everything a Check might ask of a Character outside combat: Might (force, endurance), Finesse (precision, stealth), Wits (knowledge, perception), Presence (social force, performance). Every Check rolls 3d6, always; a Virtue never changes how many dice are rolled, only what range they succeed on. See core-rules, Part Seventeen, for the full Competence rule.
Each Virtue carries its own tier on the same ladder Checks and combat share: Untrained, Trained, Skilled, Expert, Renowned. At creation, assign the fixed array 2/1/1/0 freely across the four Virtues (2 and 1 map to Skilled and Trained; 0 is Untrained), so a starting Character is Skilled in one Virtue, Trained in two, and Untrained in the fourth. No point-buy, no math beyond placing four numbers.
A Skill (see Advancement) or a Guild's professional domain raises a single named task one tier above its governing Virtue. Everything else that Virtue touches stays at its base tier. This is the only way a tier moves; there is no other bonus to a Check's range.
Advancement¶
Adventures Beyond the Mists advances Characters through Levels. This replaces the earlier freeform XP economy, in which a Character simply accumulated an open-ended point total and spent it whenever. That model was hard to audit, awkward to state at the table ("I have 53 XP"), and prone to bookkeeping drift. See retired-mechanics.
How Levels Work¶
A Character reaches each new Level after earning 100 XP. The threshold is the same for every Level and every class: XP fills like a percentage bar from 0 to 100, and crossing 100 raises the Character one Level and resets the bar to 0. The 100-XP threshold is universal across all classes. What a Level grants is class-specific.
Each Level grants one of two things:
- Advancement Points, spent freely on the menu below.
- A fixed class benefit, which cannot be purchased and cannot be declined. It simply arrives. The two fixed benefits are an additional personal die and an increase to Command Capacity.
Personal dice and Command Capacity are no longer on the purchasable menu at all. This is the point of the restructure, not a side effect. When raw power is bought with the same currency as Bond, Guild entry, and traits, prioritizing power is a dominant strategy and every other purchase is a deliberate sacrifice. Moving power onto a fixed schedule removes that competition entirely: Advancement Points now buy only genuine choices.
Example ladder (illustrative, not locked, and explicitly not identical for every class):
| Level | Grants |
|---|---|
| 1 | Starting kit. 1 personal die. |
| 2 | Advancement Points |
| 3 | An additional personal die |
| 4 | Advancement Points |
| 5 | +1 Command Capacity, plus the class's Level 5 signature unlock |
| 6 | Advancement Points (larger pool) |
| 7 | An additional personal die (3-die maximum reached) |
| 8 | Advancement Points |
| 9 | +1 Command Capacity (maximum reached) |
| 10 | Advancement Points |
Level 5 is a real milestone, not a coincidence. Four classes place their signature unlock there: the Knight's Set, the Skirmisher's Pierce, the Warden's Straight, and the Errant's Early Blitz. All four for the same underlying reason, that Level 5 is where each class's Pool first grows large enough for its signature mechanic to cross from mathematically present into reliably firing.
Per-class frictions, unresolved. The example ladder above does not work as written for four classes:
- Warden. Resolved. Command Capacity grows to a maximum of 3, at Levels 5 and 9, the smallest ceiling in the game; this keeps the class small while giving its Straight a Pool large enough to fire. See classes/warden.md.
- Errant. Resolved. Its second die lands at Level 5 (bundled with Early Blitz), the ladder ceiling is 2, and a third die is gear-only; it also trades its absent Company for a larger Advancement Point pool and a personal Specialty Menu. See classes/errant.md. Chancellor. Resolved: personal die fixed at 1 forever (never 2), fielded Command Capacity fixed at 6, and its Command Capacity slots convert to Reserve growth and Split Cap; see classes/chancellor.md.
- Squire. Resolved. The class was rebuilt: Favor and Stockpile are retired for a single Assist economy, its dice make Assists (never combat hits) as a side pool, and its second die at Level 3 feeds that generation. Guardian's Assist and Keep Standing give it Fall-prevention. See classes/squire.md.
- Chancellor. Resolved. Fielded Command Capacity stays fixed at 6 (to keep the Grand Muster rare); its Command Capacity slots are repurposed into Reserve growth and Split Cap increases (to 3 at Level 5, to 4 at Level 9), the latter also setting an automatic-lieutenant-Bond count. It receives the fewest Advancement Points in the game (about 15). See classes/chancellor.md.
All four are logged in open-questions and must be resolved before any class's Level table is finalized.
XP thresholds are set at 100 per Level, universal across all classes. What is not yet set is the earn rate: how much XP a Character gains per session or milestone. Working guidance, pending real playtest data, is that a typical session moves a Character 33 to 50 XP, roughly a third to a half of a Level, with the exact amount depending on what the party accomplishes. The rate is the GM's dial to turn; the 100 threshold does not change. XP and Advancement Points remain separate currencies: XP fills the bar to the next Level, and the Level then grants either Advancement Points or a fixed class benefit.
What Advancement Points Buy¶
| Spend | Cost | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Raise a Retainer's Bond | Points equal to the new Bond level (1 to reach Bond 1, 2 to reach Bond 2, 3 to reach Bond 3, 4 to reach Bond 4) | Each increase also grants one pick from the Retainer growth menu. The same track as organic in-play Bond growth; either path, or both, can raise the same Retainer. See companies-and-command, Part Three. |
| Gain a Skill | 2 | Raises one named task one tier above its governing Virtue (see Axis Three: Virtues). Example: Finesse Trained plus a Lockpicking Skill picks locks at Skilled, while everything else Finesse governs stays at Trained. |
| Gain a Specialty | 1, 2, or 3, by tier | A Class-specific or universal feature. The price is set by the Specialty's tier, not a flat cost: Tier 1 (minor or non-combat) costs 1, Tier 2 (standard combat) costs 2, Tier 3 (build-defining) costs 3. See Specialty cost tiers below, each class file's Appendix and Level 1 menu, and the full per-Specialty audit in specialty-tiers-and-pricing.md. |
| Join a Guild | 3 | Standing and a foothold in one Guild (Thief, Mage, Priest, Bard, Alchemist, or Guardians). Grants two things: the universal Retainer perk (recruit a Retainer of that Guild's type into the Company, within existing Command Capacity; see companies-and-command, Part Five), and that Guild's personal Opening Ability, small and immediate (see 05-setting/guilds). Larger Guild abilities (The Priest's Hand, or the Mage Guild's seven-Component Ritual system, for instance) are bought afterward as Specialties, once the Character has standing. |
| Acquire a Named Weapon | 3 | A weapon worth an additional personal die, at the Character's own Hit Range. Open to any Character regardless of Guild. Fictionally, this is a found or won relic, not a commission; true magic items in Hynafol are found, not crafted. |
| Gain Fluid Footwork | 3 | Universal, open to any Character regardless of Class. Splits a Move around an Action instead of the default Move-then-Act order (some movement before the Action, the rest after). Grants no additional movement. See universal-specialties.md. |
| Gain Held Breath | 2 | Universal. Once per Combat, decline to bank a hit this turn and instead save it, adding it to a future roll's total. See core-rules, Part Eighteen. |
| Gain Empty Hand | 2 | Universal, and a smaller version of the Squire's native trait. If a Character's very first roll of a turn produces zero hits, a small consolation is granted rather than nothing. See core-rules, Part Eighteen. |
| Gain a Court Specialty | 1 or 2 | Half-Fae only, and gated to the Character's own Heritage Court. Twelve exist, two per Court. See lineage.md. |
Specialty cost tiers. A Specialty's price is set by what it does, on a three-tier scale rather than a single flat cost. Tier 1 (1 point) is a minor or non-combat edge: an exploration, social, or narrow always-on convenience that does not touch combat math. Tier 2 (2 points) is a standard combat Specialty: a repeatable combat effect such as a once-per-combat extra die, a Condition removal, a reactive negation, +2 Hit Points, or a positional tool. This is the workhorse tier, where most Specialties sit. Tier 3 (3 points) is build-defining: an effect that reshapes how the Character plays or delivers an outsized, recurring payoff, such as preventing a Fall, adding a personal die, raising Command Capacity, or a signature economy shift. The anchors already fixed elsewhere agree with this scale: a Named Weapon (which adds a die) is 3, a Skill is 2, a Court Specialty is 1 or 2. The canonical definitions and a full per-Specialty audit against them live in specialty-tiers-and-pricing.md.
A Character's personal dice are capped at 3, full stop, regardless of how many dice-granting sources (Kit, Named Weapon, a Level grant) they hold. Oaths are no longer among these sources; a Knight's Oath now sharpens an existing die rather than adding one. See classes/knight.md. The cap controls the outcome, not the pace of earning XP.
A Character begins Guildless. Joining a Guild is earned in play, the way a newcomer through the mists would slowly find footing in Hynafol's institutions, not something checked off at the character sheet on day one. This does not leave early Characters without in-fight survival: the Warden's Borrowed Strength and the Knight's Rally already carry that weight as base Class kit, and the six-Lives system absorbs the risk of going without a healer. The Priest's Hand is a strong option, not a required one.
Each Guild's starter perk is the same rule across all six: access to that Guild's Retainer type. See companies-and-command, Part Five, for the six Guild Retainer profiles.
Your Retinue¶
During character creation, choose your starting Retainers from the four basic roles (Archer, Blade, Halberdier, Shieldbearer; see companies-and-command, Part One), up to your Class's starting Command Capacity. Every starting Retainer begins at Bond 0. Naming them is free and always available; Bond itself is earned in play or bought later (see companies-and-command, Part Three).
A Retainer's role is not fixed for life. During downtime you may retrain a Retainer into a different role, on the same footing as reconfiguring a Kit or changing armor. Narrate the change however you like: the same soldier trained into a different kit, or a change of personnel with a new face and personality. Either reading is fine, and the choice is yours.
When your Command Capacity rises at a Level, you gain one new Retainer slot. That Retainer joins during your next period of downtime rather than mid-adventure. How they come to you, and why, is for you and your GM to decide; a short story for the arrival is welcome but never required.
Starting Specialties and Kit¶
Every Character chooses a Kit (Sword-and-Shield, Twin Blades, Polearm, Bow and Arrow, or Pike) at creation, free of cost. This is mandatory equipment, not a purchased option. See kits.md.
In addition, every Character gets 3 Advancement Points to spend before the first session on their Class's Level 1 Starting Specialties menu, a short list specific to that Class rather than the whole Advancement list above. These menus live in each class file. The 3 points are the whole of a Character's starting Specialty budget; there is no separate free Specialty on top of them. Menu entries are priced on the standard Specialty tiers (Tier 1 costs 1, Tier 2 costs 2, Tier 3 costs 3; see Specialty cost tiers above), so how many Specialties a Level 1 Character walks away with depends on how the 3 points are spent: one Tier 3 pick, a Tier 2 plus a Tier 1, or three Tier 1s. The two entries that predate the tier system, the Errant's Never Alone and the Chancellor's Extended Command, are now ordinary priced entries on their Class menus rather than a separate free pick. Guild entry is never on this menu; a Character begins Guildless by design. This spend is a one-time creation choice, made before the Level ladder begins at Level 2, and is not folded into or replaced by the Level system.
Every Character begins play with exactly 1 personal die. No Class, and no starting choice, changes this. Dice-granting options were removed from the Starting Specialty menu on 2026-07-31, because leaving them there would have reopened the exact power-versus-everything-else competition the Level restructure was built to close, and would have contradicted the 1-die baseline every class's Level math rests on. The second personal die now arrives automatically at the Level a Class's own table names.
The six bonded companions that used to live on this menu (Guardian Spirit, Falconry, Warhound, Familiar, A Palfrey, A Hunting Hound) were not discarded. They are now the flavor a Character chooses for that first additional die. See bonded-companions.md.
Each Class's Level 1 Starting Specialties menu now lives in its own class file (see classes/), replacing the single near-empty menu this section once described. All eight menus are written, each priced on the standard Specialty tiers, and a Character spends the 3 starting points across the menu. The menus remain a playtest draft, and the individual specialty re-prices they assume (see specialty-tiers-and-pricing.md) still need sign-off. [PLAYTEST]
Universal Specialties¶
Distinct from both a Class's own Growth Potential list and the Starting Specialty menu above: a small, growing set of Specialties any Character can buy through ordinary Advancement regardless of Class (currently just Fluid Footwork). See universal-specialties.md.
Roadmap¶
- V1 quickstart. Pregenerated Characters, no creation required, built as instances of these eight Classes. Advancement is not needed for the quickstart itself but applies the moment a table carries these Characters into ongoing play.
- V1.5. Class selection with a default Company and gear.
- V2. Full rolled Character tables per Class, Lineages, and Vows.
Deferred to the Full Core Book¶
- Vows. A personal, ongoing reason the mists called this Character, distinct from the Knight's Oaths.
- Characters-within-Class. A larger rolled roster in the Mythic Bastionland style, roughly 15 to 30 per Class, each a flavored instance (title, verse, Property, and hooks) of its Class.