Happy Alternity Game Day!

 

Better late than never, one supposes.

This year, I took a look at one of the more recent additions to Thorn & company's... company: the darra Demarra of the Kaladreshi Darine.

The Darine are the Traladaran tribes around Achelos that fled west from the Beastman invasion. Some say the Immortals cursed them for leaving their countrymen, and it is true that misfortune befalls the Darine that attempts to settle down: crops wither, hearths go cold, livestock sickens. Some few, though, take on Zirchev's Oath, offsetting the burdens of the curse in exchange for boons which they use in service of furthering the Huntsman's Eternal Quest.

Demarra was built as a third level hero. This was just a spitball guess, as I haven't done much deep work comparing power levels between versions of the game. Sasquatch's Alternity only has ten levels, compared to Classic D&D's 36, and more modern versions' 20. So... not a newbie character by any means, but not anywhere near the height of what she might achieve.

Running through the steps of character creation for the game, we get the following:

1. Come up with a concept and some connections to the setting
Demarra is her clan’s darra, which translates (very) roughly to “way-finder,” in Thyatian. She is the one to whom vardo drivers defer at an unfamiliar crossroad, and determines where the clan will make camp each night. She has known Thorn since before he took that name.

2. Determine your ability scores
Converting her ability scores from D&D to Alternity and then to SQuAlternity gives us the following:
STR 4    INT 5
AGI 5    FOC 4
VIT 4    PER 6

3. Choose a species if the setting offers nonhuman protagonists.
Demarra is a human, of Traladaran descent.

4. Pick an archetype or go freeform
SQuAlternity’s existing archetypes don’t really match what I have in mind for Demarra-as-a(n) (N)PC. As such, I went with the freeform template.

5. Select your talents.
Freeform characters start with three discretionary talents from different constellations. For Demarra, I chose Martial Arts: Grappling, Dirty Fighting, and Closer. Since she is third level, she has two more talents, and I stuck with the Closer constellation, giving her Character Study and Seductive.


6. Assign your skill points.
Her five initial mandated skills are Hand to Hand (knives) 6(Attack), Dodge 5(Defensive), Mechanics 4(Technical), Performance 4(Social), and Survival 4(Environmental). At third level, Demarra has 25 skill points to spend on discretionary skills: Driving 4, Misdirection 4, Resilience 4, Willpower 4, Awareness 4, Coercion 2. Points were also added to give a bit of a boost to her Hand to Hand and Dodge mandated skills.
Because of her outgoing personality, I gave her the Leader archetype’s 1-step bonus to Social skills.


7. Get some gear.
Demarra’s main piece of gear is her vardo, which carries all of her stuff. 


8. Take care of finishing touches like initiative and durability
20-(Agi+Foc) gives Demarra an initiative score of 11/16/21+, at +1 step

I translated her Gift of Zirchev as the Spatial Awareness mutation (Mutations are found in the Playtest draft of the rules).  She always knows where she is in relation to where she’s been. She cannot be distracted, and reduces the penalty to attack a dodging opponent by two steps, and has a +2 step bonus to driving checks.

Zirchev’s Gift is my reskin of Eberron’s dragonmarks: Extra little magical something to make characters interesting and unique. Initially, they are only available to the Achelos tribes of Traladarans: the branches most closely related to Zirchev. While most call it a gift, others would deem it a curse. Those who would call it such a thing, though, usually use the gift for personal gain, or counter to the gift’s intended purpose.
The Kaledresh tribe’s slant on the magical gifts extends to pathfinding, and easing and speeding of travel. In Classic D&D, these powers were imitated with spells as spell-like abilities, taken from the Merchant spells in Gazetteers 9 and 11.

Were I to cross these over to SQuAlternity, they would most likely be written up as mutations-as-talent constellations. (Ah, yet another project to add to the ever growing list….)