There are a few straggling items in creating a character in order to flesh them out more fully in the game.
Here is a small sample of the occupations you can choose from.
Switching up Attributes
If you have somewhat confusing attributes that don’t please you you can do a few things.
- Accept it, and realize that not everybody is easy to understand and that your character is complex and mysterious. Like the Green Power Ranger.
- Shuffle the scores, but don’t change the scores. Such as, swap Appearance with Education. That’s a tradeoff we’ve all made in our lives.
- Re allocate the total points, but never exceed the possible rolled scores of each attribute.
Do this only with the primary attributes, obviously. As the secondary are all dependent on primary.
Income
Character yearly income is determined by a die roll, just like basically anything else in the game. It also determines what assets this character has saved.
For a 1920s game, the result of a 1D10 roll assigns the income. I’ve put in parenthesis what hourly wage this would be roughly equivalent to in 2013 dollars. It’s a very rough estimate, but it helps you conceptualize the financial situation of the character.
Yearly income:
- $1500 + room & board ($7)
- $2500 ($13)
- $3500 ($17)
- (also) $3500 ($17)
- $4500 ($22)
- $5500 ($26)
- $6500 ($32)
- $7500 ($37)
- $10000 ($50)
- $20000 ($100)
Total assets in holding for a character are determined as 5 times yearly salary, and one tenth of that is available banked as cash (immediately available by visiting local bank). Another tenth of that is in investments available with 30 days notice.
Let’s say you rolled a 5, setting your income at $4500. That would mean your total character’s worth would be $22500. With one tenth ($2250) in the bank and another tenth ($2250) available as stock options, your character has a remaining $18000 in assets. These are held as a house, or a barge, or a coin collection or whatever, and is generally unattainable within a single mission’s time, unless your character is remarkably good at some sort of wheeling and dealing. (Accounting, fast talk or some such)
Age
Education has a direct bearing on age in CoC. The more education you have, the older you have to be. Whether this requirement comes as a side effect of having gone to med-school, or whether it’s because your character has had to live on the streets for years and learned how to bottle his own pickles using his own fluids, that tidbit is up to you. But to determine age you follow the formula as such:
Minimum age for character is EDU + 6 Years. This will generally not even put you above 20 years old at a minimum.
However, you can increase your character’s age at creation as a tradeoff. For every 10 years you age your character, you gain another point of EDU, adding 20 more occupation points to your pool. But once you pass 40, this takes a toll on the body, and for every 10 years above 40 you push your character, you must subtract one point from either STR, CON, DEX or APP. (Your face gets liver spots or something)
Having a high skilled, disgusting looking 80 year old character could be delightful.