Alternate Character Creation

1) Race Human - Every character starts with a Free Edge plus Nationality bonus below;

• American - Free Jack-of-All-Trades Edge

• British
  • Englishman - d6 Spirit
  • Scotsman - d6 Fighting
  • Irishman - Luck Edge
  • Welshman - 750 starting cash

• Dutch - d6 Boating

• French - +2 SP
  • Parisians - Attractive Edge
  • Lover - Seducer Edge

• Spanish - 1000 starting cash

• Portuguese - d6 Navigation or Repair

• Indian - d6 Survival

• Ex-Slave - d6 Vigor

• Other - +2 SP

2) Traits

• Every character starts with a d4 in each attribute, and has 5 points with which to raise any or all of them. Raising a d4 to a d6, for example, costs 1 point. You’re free to spend these points however you want with one exception: no attribute may be raised above a d12.

Attributes

• Agility - is your hero’s nimbleness, quickness, and dexterity.
• Smarts - is a measure of how well your character knows his world and culture, how well he thinks on his feet, and his mental agility. See the section about Common Knowledge on page 22 for another use of the Smarts attribute.
• Spirit - is the spiritual side of your hero, reflecting his inner wisdom and willpower. Spirit is very important as it helps your character recover from being rattled when injured.
• Strength - is raw physical power and general fitness. Strength is also used to figure out your warrior’s damage in hand-to-hand combat.
• Vigor - represents endurance, resistance to disease, poison, or toxins, and how much pain and physical damage a hero can shake off.

Skills

• You have 15 points to distribute among your skills. Each die type costs 1 point as long as the skill is equal to or less than the attribute it’s linked to (listed beside the skill in parentheses). If you exceed the attribute, the cost becomes 2 points per die type. As with attributes, no skill may be increased above d12.
  • Example: Fighting is linked to Agility. A character with a d8 Agility can buy Fighting for one point per die type to d8. Buying a d10 costs 2 points, and a d12 costs another 2 points.

Derived Statistics

• Pace - is how fast your character moves in a standard combat round. Humans can walk 6” in a round and can move an additional 1d6” if they run (see page 78). Write “6” on your character sheet beside the word Pace. Edges and Hindrances can modify this number. Note that this is 6” on the table-top—every inch there represents 2 yards in the “real world.”
• Parry - is equal to 2 plus half your hero’s Fighting (just 2 if a character does not have the Fighting skill), plus any bonuses for certain weapons. This is the number an opponent needs to roll in order to hit your hero in hand-to-hand combat. Like other derived stats, your Parry can be modified by Edges and Hindrances.
• Charisma - is a measure of your character’s appearance, manner, and general likability. It’s 0 unless you have Edges or Hindrances that modify it. Your Charisma is added to Persuasion and Streetwise rolls, and is used by the Game Master to figure out how the nonplayer characters of the world react to your hero.
• Toughness - is your character’s damage threshold. Anything over this causes him to be rattled or worse. Toughness is 2 plus half your hero’s Vigor, plus Armor (use the armor worn on his torso), plus any Hindrances or Edges that modify Toughness.
  • Example: John “The Patch” Gibbs’ Charisma is +0. His Pace is 6 just like everyone else. He has a d8 Fighting, so that gives him a Parry of 6. His Vigor is a d6 and he doesn’t wear any armor, so that’s a Toughness score of 5.

Languages

The characters will determine the nationality of the ship and this will determine the "ship" language. Every character will need to have this language as either a native speaker or and their second language.

Your hero knows a number of languages equal to half his Smarts die. Your hero must use up one language buying his native tongue. Any permanent increase in your Smarts during play also gains you additional languages. List all your known languages on your character sheet; you are able to speak, read and write each language you know (no roll is needed to communicate). Illiterate heroes (those who take the Illiterate Edge) can still speak multiple languages, but they can’t read or write any of them.

• Languages: Aztec, Carib Indian, Creole* (divided up into Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish), Dutch, English, French, Greek, Latin, Mayan, Portuguese, and Spanish.
  • Rather than list dozens of individual native Indian dialects, Creole is used to describe any language spoken by natives living under the dominion of a European power. Thus, the natives of every French island speak Creole French, while all native inhabitants of a Spanish colony speak Creole Spanish.

3) Edges & Hindrances

You can choose one Major Hindrance and up to two Minor Hindrances for your hero. A Major Hindrance is worth 2 points, and a Minor Hindrance is worth 1 point.

• For 2 points you can:
  • Raise an attribute by one die type.
  • Choose an Edge.
• For 1 point you can:
  • Gain another skill point.
  • Gain an additional 500 pieces of eight.

• Females - Outsider (Non-Conformist) in addition to above

A character may also choose to take the following;

• Heroic - A hero who elects to take the Heroic Hindrance without it counting toward their initial number of Hindrances (the character may still earn an additional four points) may take any one non-Legendary Edge and ignore the Rank requirement.

4) Fame

In the world of the Pirates RPG fame plays an important part. Whether he’s an officer trying to rise through the ranks, or a scurvy pirate looking to make his mark in history, a character needs to be somebody. Consequently, all characters have a Fame number, which reflects a hero’s class as well as his or her standing within society. To start with, your hero has a Fame of zero, which can be modified by Edges and Hindrances, and by the hero’s actions during the game. A positive Fame score indicates the hero is becoming well-known or respected in society and his station in life is improving. A negative score shows he is regarded as something of a rogue or ruffian. If he stoops too low, he will be reviled instead of respected. For more on how Fame works in the game, see page 91.

• I am currently debating if I will have Fame for the main Nationalities (Spain, French, English, Dutch, Other). This may involve too much record keeping so I need to think about it. My thought is that if you have a British Letter of Marque, because they are at war with Spain, and you take a Spanish ship it should raise British Fame while lowering Spanish Fame.