Player Characters

This is the locus by which players actively participate in the universe of Medaevum, and the sole reason that it's framed as a setting rather than a book or something more passive. The chaos and unpredictability of adding more than one person into the mix is what makes the experience fun. These rules don't concern themselves overmuch with whether or not a character is overpowered - no one is as overpowered as the humbling power of the game master, after all - but in making the characters interesting, internally consistent, as well as fun to play and be played with.

Character Creation

In the world of Medaevum, your character can become anything. A god, a king, a small business owner who owns their own home without a mortage. You start from nothing, though. The game of Medaevum, beyond collaborative storytelling, is having your new character rise from nothing to become or achieve something.

If your character is a noble, they are a disgraced one with no ties to their former family. If they were once wealthy, they aren't anymore. If they were once powerful, they lost that power. Characters start with nothing but a little money, and the clothes on their backs.

The exception to this is if you are collaborating with someone else. If you're making the offspring of an already established noble house, then whatever resources they have to impart upon you, you may start with. Ditto, if you're making a new character because your old one died, if it makes sense in context then you may give your new character some of what your old one accrued.

Attributes

There are three. Prowess, Willpower, and Cleverness. These three attributes measure a character's narrative weight in their three respective areas. The higher the attribute, the better they are at doing the thing. You can flavor these things however you want: perhaps your character's Prowess is very high because they're so strong, even if they aren't very skilled. Perhaps it's the other way around. These stats are prescriptive, not descriptive: if someone else's prowess is higher than yours, and you don't have something that gives you an advantage, you're going to lose a one on one fight against them.

At character creation, the player has five points to divvy up among the three attributes however they would like. Attributes start at zero, and can remain at zero if so desired.

Prowess

This is, broadly, your character's skill at fighting things. This same attribute is used for any kind of physical altercation, whether that's against another person, a beast, or a monster.

Prowess can be diminished in the course of play. When two things with Prowess attack each other, take the loser's Prowess and halve it. Then take that number, and reduce the winner's Prowess by that amount. The attacker's Prowess will remain reduced by that amount until they have had a chance to rest. The loser, by contrast, will have their Prowess reduced by that amount until they have been seen to by a healer.

Willpower

Willpower is the magical corrolary to Prowess. This is the attribute used both to gauge the power of, and one's resistance to, many magical altercations.

Cleverness

Don't take Cleverness to mean the character's general intelligence. This is the catchall for a character's accumulation of miscellaneous skills and broad competencies. Unlike Prowess which is exclusively for combat or Willpower which is exclusively for magic, Cleverness is for every other thing not directly related to those two.

It is also the one most directly affected by traits.

Traits

Beside for attributes, traits are the other way characters are defined in the world. There are different categories of traits, acquired in different ways. Beyond the categories listed here, there may be other kinds of traits that a character will not have access to unless certain conditions are met. For example, only beastmen can access beastmen traits.

General Traits

These can be picked up and dropped essentially at will. As long as it makes sense in context (i.e., it would take more than a weekend for a character go from extremely strong to nothing or vice versa). This includes at character creation: a character can start with as many general traits as their player wants.

Skill Traits

This is by far the largest and most diverse category. Everything that would require training, conditioning, or special knowledge to make meaningful use of or posess. This category includes spells.

Special Traits

These are traits that have special requirements that must be met. This may mean that only a GM can hand them out, or it might mean that they just have some special requirement (i.e., one cannot simply choose to become a ghoul but must be made into one).

Feats

Feats are distinct as being traits that have to be earned through action. These might be given out after accomplishing some great deed that pushes a character to their limits, or it might be something that must be earned by a particular action and cannot be acquired in any other way.