Splintered

Character Generation

Concept

Your character is a human being who survived the destruction of the Earth brought on by the emergence of the Traume. By taking on aspects of the Traume known as Psychometries (or PSM), your character has developed tainted abilities to combat the menace at some cost to themselves. Depending on the nature and extent of their abilities, they may appear, act or understand the world in fashions that are increasingly distant from human norms.

Roughly eight years after the Emergence, it's well-known that PSM-active individuals tend to show correlation to the nature of their manifestations based on two characteristics: age and cultural background. Older PSM users tend towards Adaptations and other very physical forms of manifestation, while the very young tend to show knack for Mysteries and more mental effects due to their lack of grounding in the previous nature of reality. Cultural backgrounds tend to have a lesser effect on abilities, with a tendency to color the appearance of PSM manifestations with their cultural artifacts and beliefs, conversely developing side-effects that seem to match their expectations.

In all cases, PSM users with stronger neurosis (especially those worsened by Emergence) tend to have the most raw power, and conversely demonstrate the least stability. The nature of these powers and their relation to the Traume is unknown by most people, though the resemblance to the actual natures of the Traume is more than disturbing to some.

Statistics

Base Attributes

• Strength: Strength represents the physical power of a character, as well as their ability to use it effectively.
• Endurance: Endurance represents the physical toughness of a character, allowing them to tolerate increasing levels of physical trauma.
• Personality: Personality determines the force of an individual's character and ability to influence others.
• Willpower: Willpower determines the force of will and tolerance to mental trauma, as well as their ability to influence their environment.
• Intelligence: Intelligence measures the mental acuity and learned knowledge of a person, as well as the ability to analyze that knowledge.
• Perception: Perception measures the precision of a character's ranged attacks, as well as the accuracy of their senses and intuition.

• Luck: Luck is a special attribute that does not impact any of a character's actions directly during gameplay. For every point of Luck, a player can instead adjust a single roll made by their character or a character in proximity to them by d20. Each roll can be spread out across multiple actions as desired, or spent in a single particularly dramatic action.

Derived Attributes

• Health: The amount of physical punishment a person can take before going unconscious. At Health 0, a character is unconscious. Strength x Endurance
• Arcana: The amount of raw arcane fuel a person has to power Arcana abilities. At Arcana 0, a character must draw from Health or Sanity for additional power. Willpower x Intelligence
• Sanity: The amount of mental trauma a person can accrue before beginning to experience deleterious effects. At Sanity 0, a character is catatonic. Personality x Perception

• Physical Resist: The ability to resist or evade physical damage from conventional sources. Endurance + Perception
• Arcana Resist: The ability to resist or evade physical damage from magical sources. Willpower + Intelligence
• Trauma Resist: The ability to tolerate or rationalize mental trauma. Personality + Willpower

• Speed The number of physical actions a character can take per round. (Perception + Strength) /5
• Arcana Speed The number of arcana a character can take per round. (Perception + Intelligence) /5

Arcana

Arcana are a name for Psychometric expressions beyond mere superhuman ability, allowing a character to perform feats or manifest abilities that are simply impossible for a normal human to do.

Inversions

Inversions are representations of the tainted nature of the powers that PSM-active individuals manifest. Every Arcana ability and attribute that is distinctly superhuman (over 3) a character has counts towards their Inversion rating, which must be filled in by number of Inversions with equivalent total Severity. These generally have minor effects on gameplay, generally affecting a character's attempts to socialize with normal humans.