Making a Character
You need four things before your first scene: your build, a species, a type, and a backstory with a name you'd answer to on a bad night. Your build comes first — it sets the caps and formulas everything else uses.
Step 0 — Confirm your build (and your tech level)
Your table already picked one build in First Steps: Immersion, Grounded, or Full Anime. If you skipped that chapter, stop and pick now, then delete the other two.
- Immersion keeps the printed caps and gaps: baselines cap low, mutants and nanos climb without limit, demons and angels climb through stages.
- Grounded pulls every cap toward baseline-human range with variance by build — a tank caps CON higher, a mental type caps INT or WIS higher. Nobody goes godlike; bosses stay beatable.
- Full Anime raises or removes caps for everyone, including baseline humans. Ordinary people can reach the mutant and nano heights of the current game and beyond through play, training, gear, and breakthroughs.
Write your build on your sheet. Every cap and formula below means "for your build."
Your table also picked a tech level in First Steps: Full Spectrum (everything stays), Fantasy (the chrome is stripped out), or Custom (your own banned list). Fantasy tables ignore the Cyborg type, the Android and AI species, and all hi-tech gear and rules below — mutants read as bloodlines, nanos as alchemy or spirit-pacts, same stats, new skin. If it's banned at your table, it's not on your sheet.
Step 1 — Choose your species
Your species is what you are — your biology, your starting stats, your stat caps, your natural abilities, and whether you have a power pool at all.
| Species | Who they are | Power pool |
|---|---|---|
| Baseline Human | Unmodified humanity. Skill, equipment, and tactics. Caps depend on build: 20 in Immersion, near-20 for everyone in Grounded, high or open in Full Anime. | None |
| Beastkin | Animal-humanoids — fur, fangs, tails, beast form. Stronger caps in physical stats. | None |
| Halfkin | Mostly human with subtle animal traits. Passes in human society. Human-passing Halfkin follow the same ancestry-diversity rule as humans. | None |
| Mutant | Human-descended, mutated genes granting extraordinary powers. Caps by build; variance favors your power stats. | Stamina |
| Nano-Enhanced | Nanomachines fused into the body. Powerful, adaptable, EMP-vulnerable until they fuse fully. | Stamina |
| Splice | A baseline being with animal DNA spliced in. Stat caps adjust up or down per stat based on the spliced animal(s) — the only path that can lower a cap. | None |
| Demon | Extradimensional beings of immense power. Evolve through stages: Demon → Arch Demon → Demon Lord. | Mana |
| Angel | Celestial beings of divine origin. Evolve through stages: Angel → Archangel → Seraphim. | Mana |
| Android | Synthetic humanoids. Never tire, absorb energy attacks, and suppress mutant/nano/magic power on contact. Awakening (below) unlocks emotion. | Energy |
| Artificial Intelligence | A digital consciousness with no body. Uncapped Intelligence from the start. Inhabits electronics, frames, drones, and robotic bodies — mental stats are yours, physical stats are the body's. | Energy |
Some species are always enhanced (Mutant, Nano-Enhanced, Splice) and some are born as what they are (Demon, Angel, Android, AI). Others — Human, Beastkin, Halfkin — choose whether to stay baseline or take a modification.
Ancestry and looks. Human, Baseline Human, and human-passing Halfkin characters use the full range of real-life ancestries and skin tones: African / Black diaspora, East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Middle Eastern / North African, Latinx / Hispanic, Indigenous, Pacific Islander, European / White, and mixed heritage. Set ancestry explicitly, describe skin tone, hair, and features in description, and match portraits to the written look. Family members resemble each other; culturally rooted origins call for a plausible ancestry — otherwise, diversify. Children blend their parents (see Offspring below).
Step 2 — Choose your type
Your type is what's been done to you. It sets which abilities you can fuel and how your caps vary.
| Type | What it does | Fuels |
|---|---|---|
| Baseline | Nothing done to you. The absence of the other types — it never mixes. | — |
| Mutant | Variance toward your power stats. Removes or raises caps per your build. | Stamina |
| Nano-Enhanced | Variance toward CON, then STR/DEX. Removes or raises caps per your build. | Stamina |
| Splice | Adds or subtracts variance per animal spliced. | — |
| Cyborg | No built-in variance — cybernetic implants (equipment) push you past the caps. Rare, expensive, sometimes illegal high-end chrome can let a cyborg stand near an Omega that lacks speed or a speed power. | Energy |
Mutant, Nano-Enhanced, Splice, and Cyborg stack. Your sheet records the combination in characterTypes. Your name always reads [Species] [Type]: Human Mutant, Beastkin Cyborg, Human Splice. Demons and Angels skip types entirely — their progression stages replace them.
There are no levels, so types no longer grant growth per level. They grant cap variance, pool access, and breakthrough eligibility (Omega below).
Step 3 — Write the person
This is the step tables skip, and it's the one the character is built on. Three fields are required before the sheet counts as a character — the creation wizard won't let you past them:
- Name — a name you'd answer to on a bad night. It may be a cover name; if it is, the true name lives in
secrets, never in the open. - Background — not flavor text, but mechanical. It sets your starting stats (from your species' baseline, adjusted for who you've been), your 4–8 starting skills at 1–25, your starting credits (from your life, not your power — a gifted mutant in a rundown pod with empty pockets is completely valid), and your modest Tier 1–2 starting gear. One hard rule: if you're a Cyborg, you must start with a Power Cell equipped or in your inventory. Without one, every implant shuts down.
- Description — what a stranger sees first: skin tone, hair type and style, facial features, build, dress. Portraits are painted from this, never from the name — a name in a prompt generates a stranger.
- Personality — how they act, what motivates them, what they do when pushed. Plus ancestry, stated explicitly for humans and human-passing characters (it shapes appearance only, never competence or role).
- Baseline reliance — baseline humans lean on weapons, tools, and teamwork. Powered frames built for straightforward fighters are the great equalizer; see gear rules for availability.
Step 4 — The table does the rest
The GM sets your Health Tier (0–3: how tough your build is), computes your derived stats (HP, resources, speed, perception) from stats directly — no level multiplier — records your racial and type abilities, and builds your sheet with every resource at maximum. You start at full power, ready for your first scene.
If you're stuck, start from the species that excites you most, then ask: what was done to me, and what did it cost? The answer to that second question is usually your character.
Breakthroughs — Omega, awakening, and beyond
Omega tiers (mutants and nanos). Power climbs in order: Omega → Planetary Omega → Galactic Omega → Universal Omega → Omega God. Each name is a threat scale — a Planetary Omega endangers planets, a Galactic Omega endangers galaxies, a Universal Omega endangers universes, an Omega God is essentially divine. Only mutants and nanos with capped power stats and low Stamina qualify for the hidden Omega roll made when they push abilities below their Stamina threshold; the Beyond Your Limits ability (which all mutants and nanos hold) lets them spend HP when Stamina runs short, fainting instead of dying if HP would drop too far, and raises the roll's odds until combat or consciousness ends. Success brings a large jump to HP, Stamina, stats, and caps — every tier adds to the max rather than setting a new flat max, with a bigger bonus tier-over-tier to whatever stat was pushed to earn it — plus new tier-flavored abilities split across mutant and nano sources. Omega God has no cap.
Android awakening. An android first caps the emotional stat (Charisma or Wisdom, table's call), then an emotional experience unlocks feeling. A later extreme emotional surge triggers awakening and greatly raises stat caps.
AI awakening. AI begins with uncapped Intelligence and capped-at-1 (or 0) physical stats — bodies they inhabit supply the physical numbers while their mental stats carry over. Awakening lets them feel and removes the Charisma and Wisdom caps. An AI lives in its core: destroy it and the AI dies. Backups are expensive, slow to upload, and destructible.
Offspring and legacy
Children of two parents average both parents' stats as their starting stats, with each cap set above that start so the child can grow past the parents — except Omega God, which is uncapped and stays uncapped. Only Omega-tier (or higher) mutant and nano parents pass enhanced caps and powers; a cyborg with no powers or nanos has a baseline child, and so does a non-Omega nano with no mutant powers. A child of two Omega holders is born at the lower parent's tier with retroactive HP, Stamina, and cap bonuses applied. Power inheritance favors blends (fire plus shadow → fire, shadow, both, flame-shadow, rarely something new, very rarely nothing). Looks blend the parents; cross-species children follow world lore, then genre convention (human plus beastkin → halfkin, human plus elf → half-elf), then GM judgment. Magic can pass genetically. When your character dies, you may continue as one of their children — the world remembers your name, for good and ill.