Character creation rules and expectations: Horror Heroes in the Middle-Earth campaign setting

Point buy: 15 points

Ability scores: No score can be reduced below 7 or raised above 18 after racial adjustment."

Also worth mentioning that having several dumped mental stats makes the character vulnerable to madness and insanity, since your Sanity score is Intelligence+wisdom+charisma. An adventurer with a low sanity score will most likely have a very short career.


Background story: Write a background story. Short or long. The longer the more is the GM given to work with, who in return will grant an appropriate story feat, or create feats specifically for your charcater based on his background and/or grant a spell-like ability: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/story-feats/

Include/define as many points in the background as possible: (Or write a few words and just let the story unfold as you play)

Examples/suggestions:
- Place of birth (either an excisting area, or an area the player wish to create/name).
- Presence or absence of family members.
- The past (what kind of people did the character like/hate, events that shaped the characters personality)
- The future (plans, wishes, goals, motivations.
- What the character like, hate, respect, loathe or resent.
- What makes your character happy/sad/angry?
- What is your character afraid of?

Why join a party and stay there?
1. Survival in a grim and dark world/safety in numbers.
2. Access to special skills you need (protective, practical, magical, social abilities/connections etc.)
3. Shared goals.
4. Altruism. An internal drive to help or afflict change for the better, seek redemption for your past etc.
5. It´s a job, contract, debt.
6. Already old aquintances.
7. Someone has dirt on and blackmails the character.
8. Acceptance for who you are.

- What do you as a player want to do?

1. Have a Goal: Strive to be the best at something, to create something, to see a place, to get married, or to achieve some other goal. Whatever it is, have something you want above all other things.

2. Have a Reputation: Maybe you’re a great juggler, or maybe you slipped on the stairs in front of the whole town. Whatever it is, it’s something locals remember about you.

3. Have a Friend: Whether a friend from school, a coworker, an army buddy, or someone you saved, have someone you’re close to and whom you wish well.

4. Have a Home: It might be a neighborhood you love, your parent’s house, or a room you rent; in any case, it’s the place you call home.

5. Have a Signature Item: A signature item is something that is recognizably yours, be it a weapon with a distinctive grip, a piece of jewelry, a lucky charm, or your favorite scarf.

6. Have a Problem: Maybe you don’t have any money, a member of your family is sick, or you’re trying to get home. Whatever the issue is, you’re doing your best to solve it.

7. Have a Secret: Maybe you can’t read, left your crewmates to die, or made your long-lost sister run away. This should be something that would embarrass or endanger you if others found out.

8. Have a Reason to Be Brave: Maybe it’s to be like your hero, maybe it’s to repay a debt, maybe it’s for your child, but have a reason to occasionally face your fears.

Multiclassing:
Players can dip into other classes with multiclass rules if they wish. If there is no way to set in motion a concept the player wants with these rules, the GM will modify the chosen class in such a way as to make an ability possible.


Story and character developement
Pursuing character story and delving into roleplay develops the characters personality and can unlock hidden resources. Such things can manifest within the character when exposed to raw spell power, researching and discovering hidden knowledge, stumbling upon strange items and relics, or by advancing in a guild or faction.


Insanity and madness: (books: Horror and Occult Adventures)

An abundance of horrors can scar a being. Wounds and fatigue can ravage the flesh. Poisons and venoms can putrefy a creature from within. Curses and hexes can assault the body and soul through supernatural means. But of all the horrors a hero might face, few are as debilitating or insidious as those that assault their sanity. And what also ravages and twists the flesh also scar the mind.




Sanity Score: Your sanity score is equal to the sum of your mental ability scores (Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom) minus any ability damage taken to those ability scores.

Example:
Intelligence: 12
Wisdom: 12
Charisma: 14
Sanity Score:38 (12+12+14)


Sanity Threshold: Your sanity threshold is equal to the bonus of your highest mental ability score minus any ability damage to that score (minimum 0).

Example:
Charisma 14 (+2)
Sanity threshold:2

When you experience a sanity attack, if the sanity damage from that attack equals or exceeds your sanity threshold, you decend deeper into the darkness of your mind. The extent of the damage is either lesser or greater depending on the relation of your current sanity damage and your sanity edge.

If your sanity threshold is 0, you always suffer a madness upon taking 1 or more points of sanity damage.


Sanity Edge:
Your sanity edge is equal to 1/2 your sanity score.

Sanity score:38  =  Sanity Edge:19

When you experience a sanity attack that causes you to gain a madness, compare your total amount of sanity damage to your edge to determine the potency of the madness. If your current sanity damage is less than your sanity edge, then you manifest a lesser madness.

If your current sanity damage is equal to or greater than your sanity edge, you manifest a greater madness instead.

Furthermore, when you accrue total sanity damage equal to or greater than your edge, any dormant lesser madnesses you have manifest again.

Effects of Sanity Damage
When you experience a potential sanity attack, you must typically succeed at a Will saving throw to shake off or reduce the sanity attack’s damage.

Whether this saving throw is successful or not, if the sanity damage from a single sanity attack is equal to or greater than your sanity threshold, you gain a madness with a potency based on the relation between your total sanity damage accrued and your sanity edge (lesser if the total sanity damage is below your sanity edge, greater otherwise).

Example: Below 19 the fear and mandess effects are lesser, but torments your mental health step by step. Above 19 the mind begins to scar and the character begins to fall apart when faced with more horrors.

A character´s madness reflects the horror faced or their deep fears and potential mental breaking points.

You are afflicted with a madness until that madness is removed. You may not always manifest the madness, though. If you are afflicted with madness and then are healed of all sanity damage, all of your madnesses become dormant until you accrue further sanity damage. Typically, a dormant madness does not affect you at all, but some madnesses feature an effect that occurs only while that madness is dormant. A lesser madness that becomes dormant does not manifest again until you take sanity damage equal to or greater than your sanity edge. A greater madness stays dormant only as long as your total sanity damage remains at 0. Dormant madnesses, no matter the potency, can be removed only by miracle or wish.

Lastly, if your total sanity damage equals or exceeds your sanity score, you become insane as per insanity (no saving throw)

Reducing Sanity Damage
Sanity damage can be reduced in a number of ways. The first is with time and rest. For every 7 full days of uninterrupted rest, you can reduce the sanity damage you have taken by amount of equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum 1). Instead of relying on your own strength of personality to reduce the effects of sanity damage, you can seek out a single confidante, mentor, priest, or other advisor. You must meet with that person regularly (at least 8 hours per day) and gain guidance during the 7 days of rest. At the end of the rest period, the ally can attempt a Wisdom or Intelligence check (whichever score is higher) with a DC of 15 if your sanity damage is below your sanity edge or 20 otherwise. If the ally succeeds at this check, you can add the ally’s Wisdom or Intelligence modifier (whichever is higher) to the amount of sanity damage you remove.

Sanity damage can also be reduced with magic. A single casting of lesser restoration reduces sanity damage by 1 point up to once per day; restoration reduces sanity damage by 1d4 points once per day;


Hero/Fate points:
- Beginning with 1 hero point at level 1, gaining 1/level. Hero points are referred to as Fate points in the Middle-earth setting. The name covers more all of the different individuals in a world. Rogues or Inquisitors might lean more towards fate and luck then results from heroic deeds. Fate points suits all classes.
- Hero point feats are restricted from the Middle-Earth campaign.

Uses of Fate points restricted to: Bonus, Inspiration, Recall, Reroll.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/hero-points/


Starting wealth:
- All characters begin with the given class´s average wealth.
- In addition to the set average wealth the characters counts as have 56 days (8 weeks or 2 months) of savings through labour. Thus they must roll a profession, perform or any similar skill in which you could attain money from to determine the extra wealth made from honest labour or dishonest labour.

1. Roll 1d20+ any desired skills appropriate in making money.
   Example: 1d20+5 (Profession:sailor or librarian or Craft: armor).

2. The result must be divided by 10 to calculate the amount of gold and silver you earn for 1 day.
   Example: the result was 18. Divide by 10 = 1,8. That means you earned 1 gold piece and 8 silver pieces that day.

The game mechanic for middle-earth allows characters to roll once every month and multiplying the number with 28 as if you´ve had work for a whole month (four weeks).

3. Multiply 1,8 with 28 to calculate one whole month of work. = 50 gp and 4 sp.

4. Now you have rolled for one month of work. Roll for the second month of work.


Formula for one month of earnings:

1. 1d20+5= 18.  (Dice result)

2. 18 divided by 10 = 1,8.  (Gold and silver pieces earned a day: 1 GP and 8 SP)

3. 1,8 gp x 28 days= 50,4 = 50 gold pieces and 4 silver pieces after one month.


Repeat for the second month:

1. 1d20+5=16
2. 16 divided by 10= 1,6 (1 gp and 6 sp)
3. 1,6 multiplied by 28 days = 44,8 (44 gp and 8 sp after the second month)

Now add both of the months earnings to sum up the gold you have in addition to the average wealth.
- 50 gp and 4 sp + 44 gp and 8 sp = 95,2 = 95 gp and 2 sp +the classes average wealth.
- 95 gp, 2 sp + 140 gp (Cleric average wealth) = Character starting wealth is 235 gp and 2 sp.


Dont spend it all on equipment and drugs now ya hear! Remeber that you need pocket money to enter certain establishments, bribe streetchildren to gather information, give money to a beggar to obtain some intel, donate to a temple to receive influence, buy food and rations, rent rooms and pay to keep your horse fed in the innkeeps stable until you have your own base of operations, repair damaged gear, spend gold to buy land, buy buildings, repair the buildings, deeds of ownership, pay tolls, pay to be allowed to wear weapons in town, buy gear to your own subordinates, pay to be transported in a heavily guarded caravan etc. etc.


Other systems to be aware of:

Crime system:
- News spread fast depending on the communities and criminal act(s) involved. If the crime is great enough a manhunt will surely follow. The greater the crime, the more resources are put into the effort. The given community will determine whether the player is trialed in court, executed by an angry mob or burned at the stake in a savage tribe in the wilderness, which will drastically change the PC´s options.

NPC response or consequences to PC actions:
- Picking sides or factions will influence how NPC´s respond to the PC´s. same if a PC donates funds or show kindness, NPC´s will respond in kind, and rumors also spread according to what the players have done, or what statements they make.
- Standing face to face with a noble, or any other NPC with power? If your behaviour does not fit social norms, expect to give the aristocrat a very bad first impression. But remember, first impressions can be mended by time, smooth talk or proving your worth, which will depend on the NPC´s personality.

Encountering entities way above the PC´s level:
- If engaging a huge sized stone giant don´t expect its statistics to be identical to the bestiary. Actually; whenever encountering a monster, NEVER expect them to have the same abilities as defined in the Bestiary. Keep in mind that the encountered entity has grown up somewhere, under certain conditions. Unless of course they have beforehand knowledge that particular creature, and/or has had time to investigate the creature before encountering it. NPC´s and monsters have the same opportunity to grow stronger, evolve and develop new and strange powers like the PC´s do.


Some good video links to emphasize the social contract and rules:

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W7BCOaFjDs "Are you a dick player?" (Notice rule nr. 1) (Bacon Battalion RPG).

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7PFSBHFQr4&t=1s "Player etiquette". 5 steps. (Also for the GM). (Bacon Battalion RPG).

All videos of DFC are down. But the titles still pose as good directions to reflect upon.

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIt8G3FJrbM&index=4&list=PLTgwt_ewEFeMquL-YAb4AOViPCc9sgjc9 Tip #4 "Keep Player and Character Separate" 02:30 min long (DawnforgedCast).

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5KwWJyibzM&list=PLTgwt_ewEFeMquL-YAb4AOViPCc9sgjc9&index=5 Tip #5  "Don´t argue with the GM" 05:12 min long (DawnforgedCast).

5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVhRd6xmAnQ&index=6&list=PLTgwt_ewEFeMquL-YAb4AOViPCc9sgjc9 Tip #6 "Don´t boss others around" 04:08 long (DawnforgedCast).

6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nJ0VcNIyEw&list=PLTgwt_ewEFeMquL-YAb4AOViPCc9sgjc9&index=10 Tip #10 "Make your characters together!" 04:04 min long (DawnforgedCast).

7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRp8GAGr6_I&list=PLTgwt_ewEFeMquL-YAb4AOViPCc9sgjc9&index=22 03:00 min long. "Dont call my character a build" (DawnforgedCast).