Creating Characters for the Cosmere RPG

With the Cosmere RPG now in players' hands, there are brand-new Knights Radiant swearing oaths at gaming tables around the world. Hundreds of enthusiastic fans played at Dragonsteel Nexus last December, and I have played it with many siblings, cousins, friends, and strangers.

Every adventure starts with your player character. Designing characters for RPGs is an absolute blast, whether it's your first time calculating max HP or your tenth max level character. Your character is more than numbers and statistics; they are the lens through which you'll see a new world.

While character creation is fun, it is also a lengthy process that can be difficult the first time through. As your guide, I will also be making a level 1 character, then leveling them up as they prepare to swear the First Ideal. You can follow along with your own copy of the Stormlight Handbook, which contains the rules for character creation, with actual abilities outlined in chapters 1–8.

Let Your Character Sheet Be Your Guide

During character creation, your character sheet is your map and compass; the better you understand it, the better your experience will be. 

Chapter 1, Character Creation, starts on page 15 of the Stormlight Handbook. The chapter includes eight basic steps to building your character:

1. Determine your character’s origins.
2. Pick a starting path.
3. Assign attributes.
4. Choose skills and expertises.
5. Pick talents.
6. Select starting equipment.
7. Tell your character's story.
8. Calculate final statistics.

Reading through these steps and exploring the many customization options available throughout the Handbook may inspire your own creativity. When conceptualizing your character, you can begin with a story in mind and build a character sheet around it, or just start building your character using the blank spaces on the sheet.

1.Origins

At the moment, the Cosmere RPG supports two main origins: Human and Singer.

Humans gain a bonus talent at first level—we’ll explain in just a moment—and Singers get to change between forms during each highstorm, with forms of power available at higher levels. (SH p. 31)

My character Orofas is a human who has spent his life sailing all over Roshar. His life at sea and the growing conflicts around the world have led him to a life of adventure, with more danger and opportunity than he would ever have imagined before leaving Mourn’s Vault.

2. Starting paths

The Cosmere RPG has six heroic paths, which are comparable to character classes in other RPGs. There are also ten Radiant paths, though you won’t create your character as a Knight Radiant if you’re starting at level 1 (more on that in the Leveling Up section below). The six paths available at level 1, and their specializations for later levels, are the following:

Agent	Investigator Spy Thief
Envoy	Diplomat Faithful Mentor
Hunter	Archer Assassin Tracker
Leader	Champion Officer Politico
Scholar	Artifabrian Strategist Surgeon
Warrior	Duelist Shardbearer Soldier

For your character, pick one starting path and note the key talent you get for that path.

In my character’s case, Orofas’s sailing career has been disrupted by the wars in Alethkar and other upheavals throughout Roshar. To adapt to these tumultuous circumstances, his crew turned to smuggling, and he has learned how to listen carefully, talk fast, and move without being seen. Because of that, I’ll make him an Agent.

3. Attributes

Your attributes are some of the most important numbers that make up your character. They add bonuses to common die rolls, often called modifiers, and contribute to other stats like Health, Focus, and—if you swear Radiant oaths—Investiture. Calculating these totals is the last step in character creation.

The six attributes in the Cosmere RPG are Strength, Speed, Intelligence, Willpower, Awareness, and Presence. To create a level 1 character, you’ll distribute 12 points between your six attributes, with none going above 3 at this level. So you could have 2s in all your stats, or 3s in four stats, or another distribution.

These stats are divided into three groups, Physical (strength and speed), Cognitive (Intellect and Willpower) and Spiritual (Awareness and Presence). 

Orofas has a 0 in Strength, 3 in Speed, 3 in Intellect, 3 in Willpower, 1 in Awareness, and 2 in Presence. He’ll be light on his feet, sneaky and smart, and once he swears his radiant oaths, he’ll have a strong start in his surgebinding abilities, as both transportation and transformation rely on Willpower and Intellect, which will give him a leg up when he starts soulcasting. His high speed will help get him out of trouble quickly when fights start, because he is not very durable.

During play, your attributes add to your actions that use them. You’ll add your speed to any Agility, Light Weaponry, Stealth, or Thievery rolls, for example.

4. Skills and expertises

Your character can specialize in many skills at level 1. You’ll see the list of them on your character sheet, under the attributes, along with three blank slots for skills you might acquire later (Surgebinding, anyone?). You’ll get rank in a skill for free, based on your starting path, with another four points to spend across other skills. Agents get one rank in the Insight skill, and I’ll add two ranks to stealth, one rank to deduction, and a rank to persuasion. 

For now, a skill can’t go above rank 2. As you level up, though, your skill caps will get higher and you’ll gain more skill points to represent your character's experience and growth.

You’ll use your relevant skills when you attempt different actions. For example, if you’re trying to dress a wound that is attracting rotspren, you’ll make a medicine skill check, adding your intelligence and your ranks in the medicine skill to whatever you roll.

You get two cultural expertises at character creation, with additional expertises based on your intellect attribute. An intellect of 1 gives you one extra expertise, an intellect of 2 gives you 2, and so on.

Because Orofas has an intellect of 3, I’ll start with three bonus expertises: sailing, crossbows, and trade law. I can assume basic knowledge in these topics, and when I attack with a crossbow, it gets the Deadly trait, meaning I can injure my target by spending an Opportunity. (Each time a character or an enemy suffers an injury, they inch closer to death. Normally injuries occur when a character is reduced below 0 hit points, but the Deadly trait accelerates that time frame.)

5. Talents

Heroic and Radiant character paths grant talents: a key talent when you first take the path, then branching talent trees that you can advance through as you level up.

Because my character is human and on the Agent path, I get the Opportunist key talent. Because I am a human, I get one additional talent at first level. I am going to take that first talent down the Investigator branch because I want Orofas to seek out answers to mysteries across Roshar. The Opportunist talent is also an intriguing  game mechanic—the plot die is something I want to play around with as much as I can with this character, and the synergy with my Crossbow expertise and the deadly trait make Orofas a potentially lethal sniper.

6. Equipment

Your starting path may also offer you equipment starter kits, which include weapons and tools. You’ll find all the details in Chapter 7 of the Handbook.

The starter kit I want for Orofas is the underworld kit, which includes two light weapons (knives), leather armor, a backpack of basic supplies, and 1d20 marks. Let's roll and see… Okay, he starts with one mark. Awesome.

7. Tell your story

Telling your story means figuring out why your character is living a life of adventure. What drove them from safety and security into danger and travel?

Orofas left the Sadeas princedom in his youth, joining Herdazian sailors to avoid the Alethi army. His father had died supporting Highprince Tanalan the Younger and his mother sent him away when the Alethi went to war on the Shattered Plains. He’s spent the last years at sea, with a crew of Herdazian cousins who have opened his eyes to a life of possibilities.

On the second page of your character sheet, there is a space for a purpose, an obstacle, and your character’s goals. Their purpose is the driving motivation behind their life of adventure, their obstacle is whatever flaw stands in their way, and their goals are the tangible objectives they work toward during their adventures.

Orofas’s purpose is “Find a Family” and his flaw is “Spite.” I’ll also give him a pair of goals, “Become Wealthy” and “Avenge My Parents.” While he spends some of his time brooding, he has also found a lot of joy at sea and through his relationships with other sailors. They haven’t healed the emotional scars of war, but they’ve started that process.

8. Calculate final statistics

Once you’ve made it to this point in the character creation process, you can start looking at math problems. Hooray! Your final calculations will help you add relevant modifiers to skill checks, combat rolls, and more. Your modifiers can fill in the bubbles next to skills: your Strength adds to your health, your Intellect and Willpower add to your Focus total, and you don’t get Investiture yet. Patience, my young padawan. These calculations start on page 23 of the Stormlight Handbook.

You can calculate defenses now as well, with each defense (Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual) total equal to 10 plus the sum of your modifiers. Other traits like your character's carry capacity, senses, recovery dice, and more are calculated as a part of this process as well.

Orofas’s health total at first level is 10, because my 0 strength doesn’t have anything to add. My Focus total is 5, and I won’t have investiture until later levels. Orofas has a physical defense of 13, a cognitive defense of 14, and a spiritual defense of 15.

Time to Play

At the table, your character sheet serves as a rules reference just for your hero. It has plenty of blank space for notes about your talents and abilities, as well as  quick answers to questions like “What dice do I roll when I attack with a spear?” or “What do I add to Persuasion rolls now that I have the third rank in the skill?”

I played Orofas in a session with my friends, exploring his mechanical abilities while fleshing out his story through roleplay. Our adventure took place in Rall Elorim, where my ship was berthed when the Everstorm struck. I met the other player characters at dinner in a local inn, where two of them were parshmen servers and the other was a Reshi merchant apprentice. When the Everstorm struck, my crew and the merchant’s Babsk were injured and the parshmen woke up from dullform with awakened minds and new forms. Tensions were high as we climbed up nearby cliffs to retrieve herbs for medicine, but we found ourselves working together when axehounds attacked us for getting too close to their dens. By the end of the night I had attracted the attention of an interested Inkspren and proved that I was better at shooting my mouth off than my crossbow.

Role-playing as Orofas was fun, and I got to dive into his story and what has necessitated his turn to adventuring. I knew a few details, like his origins in Alethkar, his Herdazian crew, and his time as a sailor, but many aspects of his character and personality only manifested as we played the game.

Leveling Up

At different points throughout your adventures, the GM will let you know that your character has leveled up. Each level boosts your character’s health and skill ranks and grants extra talents, with specific levels adding bonus health, raising the cap on your skill ranks, or giving additional ancestry talents. The full chart for character advancement beyond first level is on page 25 of the Stormlight Handbook.

When Orofas reaches level 2, he gets +5 health, +2 skill ranks, and +1 talent. A health total of 15 makes him a little heartier, should his plans fall flat. Two skill ranks bring his stealth up to 3, which is the maximum for a skill until level 5. For his new talent he is going to take the Elsecaller key talent First Ideal, as during play Orofas met an inkspren named Constrast, and he wants to start pursuing Radiant Ideals.

His fledgling bond with Contrast also gives Orofas an Investiture score of 5 (2 + Presence OR Awareness, whichever is higher) and the first rank in both the Transformation and Transportation Surges.

Finally, my character gets access to the new Stormlight actions Breathe Stormlight, Enhance, and Regenerate (SH p. 124), with the goal “Speak the First Ideal.” Orofas will start working toward a deeper Nahel bond with Contrast and embodying the self-mastery of an Elsecaller. 

Looking Forward

I’m usually the game master, so it was fun to make and play Orofas for a change! I’m also super excited to see players like you build characters and stories with all of the rich lore that the Stormlight Archive has brought to the Cosmere RPG. Plus, with the Mistborn Handbook and Mistborn World Guide coming later this year, we’ll soon be able to start creating worldhopping characters and planning adventures that span the Cosmere.

For now, though, my character has a chip on his shoulder and a budding spren bond, and that is promising enough for a very exciting adventure.