Today’s character doesn’t have much of a back story thanks to the sheer confusion involved in putting her together. Next on the shelf was the 1982 second edition of SPI’s DragonQuest. As you may know SPI was principally known as a wargames company & boy howdy does it show in the DragonQuest rules. Every section of the book has a section & subsection number; of course that’s what the cross references most often use, not the damn page number.

Ahem. Anyway, let’s get started. Stats are determined not by rolling for each, but by rolling 2d10 on a table that gives you the number of points you have to distribute between the six primary stats & the max value you can have in up to two stats at chargen. Values range from 81 points/25 max to 99/19; I roll a 9. That nets 88/23.

Physical Strength 10
Manual Dexterity 15
Agility 19
Endurance 19
Magical Aptitude 11
Willpower 14

Next, a few derived stats:

Fatigue 21 (found on a chart, based on Endurance; spent to fuel magic, lost to damage in fights)
Perception 8 (same for all humans)
Physical Beauty 4d5 + 3 = 14
Tactical Movement Rate (TMR) = 6 (determined by cross-referencing Agility on a chart; literally the number of 5-foot hexes your figure can move, shades of 4e)

The non-human kith don’t have attribute requirements. Instead you have three chances to succeed on an “other than human” roll against a different value for each kith. Choose which ones you try for wisely, though, because you must take the first kith you successfully roll for. Well, nothing ventured. Let’s try Elf – 43 vs a target of 30, nope. Halfling gets – 96 vs 15, nope. Maybe a Shapechanger (werewolf/bear/boar/tiger) – 48 vs 04, nope. Human it is.

Each PC also has an astrological aspect. Hmm, you say, interesting bit of fluff that. But oh, no. It’s far weirder. For aspect we roll a 46, which means our PC is astrologically aligned to the Summer Stars. That entails a set of bonuses & penalties. (This is a roll-under percentile system, so a negative modifier to your roll is actually a bonus.)

Midnight, stars ascendant: -10
Midnight, Summer Solstice: -25
Midnight, stars descendant: + 10
Midnight, Winter Solstice: + 25

“The effect is applied to any percentile roll … for that character for 30 seconds (!!) before & after midnight. If the night is cloudy (!!!), reduce the effect to a minmum of 2 & 5, respectively, depdning on how complete the cover is (!!!!)”

So for a harrowing one-minute period around midnight, depending on how well the GM is keeping track of the date, time & cloud cover, your chance to succeed or fail at anything varies wildly.

Time to determine our character’s heritage. Another percentile roll against another table yields … oh dear. Social status is Poor Trash, which makes our starting money multiplier 1. Next comes birth order, another roll, another table cross referencing social status & … god dammit. A 15 means Bastard (receives 50% money due but gets +25% starting XP thanks to their hardscrabble upbringing). Make two more separate percentile rolls on another table. Finally a stroke of luck – 99 gets us 250 xp & 71 nets 65 silver pennies, although that’s immediately halved to 32.

“What do you mean starting XP?” you ask. Well, here’s the thing. All skills, including weapon skills, must be bought in Rank increments, starting at Rank 0 – even at chargen. You must buy all your starting skills with the XP you roll randomly. However, what they call “skills” in DragonQuest are more like a package of abilities grouped under the name of a profession, with additional abilities accruing as the PC’s Rank in the skill increases. At chargen you can buy a skill for a mere 100xp instead of the up to 2000xp (hand to $DEITY) that some skills charge for Rank 0. We’ve got plenty of XP to spend at least.

Falchion – Rank 0, 25xp
Quarterstaff – Rank 1, 75xp for Rank 0 + 75xp for Rank 1
Beast Master – Rank 0, 100xp

That leaves 38xp saved to spend on buying skills later.

We haven’t got much money to spend but at least leather armor comes cheap & you can get a staff for the price of a leather sack.

leather armor, 20 sp – protection 4, Agility penalty -1, Stealth adjustment 0
quarterstaff 3sp – base chance 55, dam +2, class C

Your effective chance to strike with a weapon is equal to BC + MD + 4xRank. All weapons apply their modifier to a d10 roll for damage. Weapon Class determines what kind of critical wounds it can inflict; A deals piercing crits, B for slashing, & C for bludgeoning.

Couldn’t have taken that long to find all that stuff, right? Oh, that’s what you would think. But this book has no index at all, just a table of contents, & several key concepts aren’t defined until pages after they were first mentioned. Good luck trying to find something again unless you’ve dropped a bookmark every few pages…

Anyway. With no time left in the day to come up for a rational for our hero being having come to such a pass, here she is:

Name: Herewynn
Race: Human
Aspect: Summer Stars
Social Status: Poor Trash
Birth Order: Bastard
Handedness: right

Physical Strength 10
Manual Dexterity 15
Agility 19
Endurance 19
Magical Aptitude 11
Willpower 14

Fatigue 21
Perception 8
Physical Beauty 14
Tactical Movement Rate (TMR) 6

Quarterstaff – Rank 1, Strike Chance 74, Damage +2, class C
Leather Armor – Protection 4, Agility Mod -1

Skills
Unranked Horsemanship (WP+AG/2 + 8/rank) = 16%
Unranked Stealth (3xAG + 5/rank) = 57%
Rank 0 Beastmaster

Her unfortunate start in life & loss of or neglect by her parents appear to have driven Herewynn to retreat into the wilderness to live among the animals until she was closer to them than to humans – or at least in better accord with them!