Writing Characters

A Character file is a sheet for anyone who acts in the story: a player's agent, a named NPC, the enemy officer they will fight next session. The type is deliberately player-facing — it assumes a person with attributes, skills, a past, and a pack on their back. For enemies and monsters, use the Threat type instead; threats share the combat math but skip background and personality.

The fields and what they're for

• name — the only required field besides background. Name them like the world would: Sister Amalthea, Commissar Voss, Grendel of the Ninth.
• attributes — the seven Wrath & Glory attributes, rated 1–10: Strength, Toughness, Agility, Initiative, Willpower, Intelligence, Fellowship. Every test in the game is an attribute plus a skill; the Player's Handbook chapter Basic Rules Reference: Tests explains how pools are assembled. The file stores the attributes, and the table adds the skills. Store the numbers the rules reference; do not try to store every possible pool.
• skills — the eighteen core skills, each rated 0–5: Athletics, Ballistic Skill, Cunning, Deception, Insight, Intimidation, Investigation, Leadership, Medicae, Melee, Persuasion, Pilot, Psyker, Scholar, Stealth, Survival, Tech, Weapon Skill. A 0 means the character has no training — the table uses the attribute alone. Give a character the ratings their archetype and background earn them.
• species — what they are: Human, Aeldari, Ork, or another species of the 41st millennium.
• archetype — their starting template, written as a reference to an Archetype file (scum, guardsman). The Archetype file holds the template's attribute lines, skill lines, starting talents and wargear, and archetype ability — the character sheet just points at it.
• talents — a list of references to Talent files the character has learned. Talents carry their tier, prerequisites, and effect once; every character who takes them points at the same file.
• advancement — rank and tier, with xp tracking spent vs. earned. Wrath & Glory advances by rank, not level; keep the numbers the table actually spends.
• ascensions — the ascension packages the character has taken, recorded with the choices they made. Each entry references a package and lists the talents and wargear the player chose from that package's options. The sheet totals the packages' build-point cost and flags any entry that exceeds the package's pick limits.
• background — why they fight. The strongest backgrounds imply a hook the GM can pull: a debt, a desertion, a name they are trying to live down.
• personality — how they talk and decide, in a line or two.
• description — what the party sees across the table.
• notes — proficiencies, secrets, connections, table-specific rules. This is the field for mechanical detail that has no home elsewhere.
• inventory — a list of wargear references (see below).

Inventory is a reference, not a list

inventory is a list of wargear slugs, and it can mix all three kinds: longbow (a weapon), leather-armor (armor), explorers-pack (equipment). The workspace resolves each to the real file. Two computed fields do the accounting for you: carrying capacity (strength × 15 lbs) and total inventory weight (the sum of all referenced weights). This is why wargear weights matter: a character who loots everything not nailed down will hit their cap honestly, and the GM can see it at a glance.

The trade-off to respect: weight math only counts what is referenced. If you describe a heavy trophy in background but never put it in inventory, the sheet is lying. Either add it as a wargear entry or accept that the description is fluff.

Conventions that keep characters playable

• One job per character. A character who is also a faction, a location, and a quest has too many homes; split them into files and link by reference.
• Characters act, threats fight. When someone is a target or an obstacle rather than an agent, make them a Threat. Threats have traits, resilience, and wounds; characters have backgrounds and personalities. Pick by what the table needs to run them.
• Keep the sheet at the table's level of detail. A player character deserves full attributes, skills, and personality. A bar patron only needs a name and a line of description — put the full treatment in notes if you think they'll matter later.
• Don't duplicate derived math. Dice pools, defence values, and the like are assembled at the table from the rules; the file stores the inputs. If you find yourself typing a pool total into notes, that total will go stale the moment an attribute or skill changes.
• Match the rules reference. When you write traits, keywords, or effects into notes, use the vocabulary of the Player's Handbook (Exalted Icons, ED, DN, Glory) so nothing needs translating mid-session.

The example character in the project shows the intended density: a full sheet for a starting agent — attributes, skill ratings, species and archetype reference, a talent, references in inventory, a taken ascension package with its choices, and the sort of background that implies a first adventure.