Making a Character
Your character is built by spending a budget of XP. You will settle the group's Framework, pick a Tier, a Species, and an Archetype, then spend what's left raising Attributes, buying Skills, and taking Talents.
Work in this order — each step narrows the next.
1. Framework
Before anyone builds anything, the group decides what kind of game this is.
A Framework is a sentence or two describing you as a group: who you are together, what sort of adventures you want, and what you are ultimately trying to do. It is the only step you do collectively rather than alone, and everything after it is easier once it exists — it tells you roughly what Tier suits the campaign, and which characters will actually be able to work together.
Browse the Framework records in this project. Two ship with the system — one at Tier 1, one at Tier 4 — each stating its premise, who fits, and what you will be fighting. A campaign built on this system will usually add its own, tied to whoever is giving your group its orders. Read the Typical Characters line carefully: it is the constraint that stops a table falling apart. A Framework built around a hard-nosed Imperial patron may admit no Scum and no xenos, because that patron does not employ people they cannot hang. Radical Inquisitor Conclave admits almost anyone, because a radical Inquisitor does not care.
Write your own if none of them fit. Your GM authors it as its own Framework record — there is a short wizard for exactly this — and once it exists you select it from the Framework field on your sheet, alongside Species and Archetype. A custom Framework works like any other: it carries its own premise, its own Typical Characters constraint, and its own guidance for the optional Framework Bonuses rule.
Your GM has final say on what the campaign actually is.
2. Tier
Tier is the power level of the whole group, not just you. Everyone plays at the same Tier so nobody is outclassed at their own table. Your Framework suggests one, but does not bind you to it.
| Tier | Starting XP |
|---|---|
| 1 | 100 |
| 2 | 200 |
| 3 | 300 |
| 4 | 400 |
Most campaigns start at Tier 1: ordinary people in extraordinary trouble. Everything below assumes it unless your GM says otherwise.
3. Species
Choose Species before Archetype — it decides which Archetypes are open to you.
Browse the Species records in this project and read them properly. Each one lists its XP cost, its Speed, and its abilities. Two things worth knowing before you look:
- Cost varies enormously. Humans are free. Abhumans are cheap. The Astartes options will consume an entire Tier 1 budget on their own — they exist for higher-Tier play, not as a Tier 1 flex.
- Species abilities are permanent and mechanical. They grant extra dice on particular Tests, unusual senses, or penalties from how the Imperium regards you. They land on your sheet automatically under Abilities. Read that block after you build — several of them hand you dice you are entitled to claim, and the GM expects you to know they're there.
Species also carries social weight. How an Aeldari, an Ork, or an abhuman is received varies enormously by who's doing the receiving, and your GM has notes on exactly that. Being cheap in XP does not mean being cheap in consequences.
Mechanically it is one number, and worth knowing so you can catch it going wrong. Talking across Species is +2 DN, and whether it applies is decided by Keywords: a mismatch on a Species Keyword — AELDARI, ORK, ADEPTUS ASTARTES — triggers it. Human is the unmarked case; there is no HUMAN Keyword.
ABHUMAN is not a Species Keyword. It marks a strain of humanity, so between an abhuman and a Human the +2 never applies at all — a Felinid talking to a hive labourer takes only their own Abhuman +1, and never +3. Talking to an Aeldari or an Ork is the ordinary +2 instead, and the Abhuman +1 does not apply there. The full pairing table is in Species Interaction.
4. Archetype
Your Archetype is your job — what you were doing before the campaign made it someone else's problem. Browse the Archetype records for what's available to your Species.
Each Archetype grants free Attribute and Skill ratings, a signature ability, starting wargear, and Keywords.
The free ratings matter more than the price tag. You only pay XP to raise a stat above what your Archetype already granted. A cheap Archetype that grants nothing you wanted can cost you more in the long run than an expensive one that starts you where you were heading anyway. Compare the grants, not just the cost.
5. Background
Your Faction has three tables — Origin, Accomplishment and Goal. Roll d3 on each (d6 if you are Aeldari or an Ork), or just pick, or write your own; the book explicitly allows all three.
Each row carries a +1 to a stat, and you keep exactly one of your three. Choose it deliberately — it is the only mechanical thing a Background does, and +1 Max Wounds is a very different character to +1 Influence.
Set the Background Bonus field on your sheet and the seven stat bonuses apply themselves. Two are handled by hand: a Corruption bonus means you start with 1 Corruption Point, and Rogue Trader's Strange Alliance grants an extra Keyword instead.
Aeldari skip Origin entirely — an Asuryani Path replaces it. Your first Path is free; a second costs 10 XP, and any beyond that 20 XP each.
Building without an Archetype
You do not have to take one at all. Advanced Character Creation builds the character from scratch — the route to a displaced manufactorum worker, an Imperial scribe, or a pilot who answers to nobody.
You give up the Archetype's Ability, its free Attributes and Skills, its Keywords and its starting kit. In exchange you get bonus XP equal to Tier × 10, Keywords from your Species instead of a Faction, and complete freedom in how you spend — limited only by your Species' Attribute Maximums. Wargear is bought against a Value and Rarity budget set by your Tier, and you start with common clothing and one trinket from your past.
It is not the weaker option; it is the more deliberate one. Read Advanced Character Creation for the budgets and the Keyword entitlements.
Playing below the game's Tier
A Tier 3 game does not force you into a Tier 3 Archetype. If the character you want is a lower Tier than the game, that is a supported path called Creation Ascension: build the character at the Archetype's own Tier, then buy an Ascension Package to bring them up to the game's power level.
You have the budget for it — you start with 100 XP per Tier of the game, so a Tier 3 character has 300 to work with. The package costs its multiplier times the Tier you are ascending to, and you may only take one, however many Tiers you cross.
You still begin at Rank 1. Ascending at creation buys power, not history.
6. Attributes
Seven Attributes — Strength, Toughness, Agility, Initiative, Willpower, Intellect, Fellowship — each starting at 1.
| Rating | Total XP to reach |
|---|---|
| 2 | 4 |
| 3 | 10 |
| 4 | 20 |
| 5 | 35 |
| 6 | 55 |
| 7 | 80 |
| 8 | 110 |
Costs are cumulative, not per-step. Reaching rating 4 costs 20 XP total. If your Archetype granted you a 2, you pay the difference — 16, not 20.
Attributes drive nearly every derived number on your sheet. Toughness sets Wounds, Resilience and Determination. Willpower sets Shock, Resolve and Conviction. Initiative sets Defence. Fellowship sets Influence. Raising one Attribute quietly improves several things at once, which makes them better value than they first appear.
7. Skills
Eighteen Skills, each starting at 0, same cumulative structure.
| Rating | Total XP to reach |
|---|---|
| 1 | 2 |
| 2 | 6 |
| 3 | 12 |
| 4 | 20 |
| 5 | 30 |
| 6 | 42 |
| 7 | 56 |
| 8 | 72 |
A Skill rating is not what you roll. Your dice pool is Attribute + Skill. Ballistic Skill 3 with Agility 3 is a pool of 6. A Skill at 0 is still usable — you roll the Attribute alone, and it hurts.
Your sheet computes every pool for you. Read it off the sheet rather than doing arithmetic at the table.
8. Talents
Talents are specific named tricks — a knack for headshots, an unnatural steadiness under fear, a reputation that opens doors. Browse the Talent records; each lists its own cost and effect.
They appear on your sheet under Abilities alongside your Species and Archetype abilities. One or two at Tier 1 is the cheapest way to make a character feel like a person rather than a stat block.
9. Wargear, Wealth and Influence
Your Archetype hands you a starting kit and it goes straight into your inventory. Open the individual weapon and armour records to see what they actually do.
Wealth equals your Tier. It abstracts what you can lay hands on — bribes, supplies, a favour called in. You may buy up to 4 extra points at creation for 1 XP each.
Influence equals your Fellowship minus 1. It is standing rather than money: who returns your messages, and whether an Arbites sergeant hears you out before deciding what to do with you.
Before you play
Check three things on the finished sheet:
- XP remaining is not negative. The sheet flags overspending.
- Your Abilities block is populated. That is where your bonus dice live, and it is the first thing to check before any roll.
- Your Wargear Traits block resolves. If a trait reads NOT DEFINED, tell your GM — something isn't wired up, and it will matter mid-fight.
Or read a finished one
@Missing file is a complete Tier 1 character built on exactly the budget above — a Human Imperial Guardsman, 100 XP spent, one Talent taken. Open her sheet alongside this chapter and every step described here points at something you can actually see: what her Archetype granted for free, what she paid to raise, and how her Attributes turned into Wounds, Defence and Determination without her writing a single one of them down.