Alright one of the things that people have been sort of baffled over on IRC is how I’d do System Agnostic stat blocks, which of course is fine but I figure I might as well demonstrate how I do so.

First of all every character needs a concept so I’ll go with a Sage of the Magos Informatio* who are more or less dedicated to the consumption and storage of all information in the world, in his case he prefers to consume personally so he uses his magic to lead him to major events in the world to write into his journals.

* Yes I totally just invented that within seconds, I wanted a group of Magic Science Spies, Librarians, and Journalists and I just whipped up a mediocre badly done latin phrase to do it.

So the concept is pretty simple, now to do the character building by splitting him into three subjects: Relationships, Motivations, and Capabilities (I know what you’re thinking, what the hell? He doesn’t have anything remotely physical listed except Capabilities, what the hell PixelScum? Are you DECEIVEING ME? Well guess what, I’m not, prepare yourself for wizardry and by wizardry I mean I’ll be demonstrating how to use all three of my previously introduced methods in concert while maintaining character subjectivity for easy insertion into the story.)

For Relationships I’ll be covering both good AND bad ones as such:

His biggest enemies are from the Magos Noctis – especially the more prestigious members due to his possession of the Nightmare Codex, in which resides the names of hundreds of thousands of Nightmares still incubating within the darkness of the Serpentine – and the council leader of the Magos Tempora – who believes he was fleeced through unfair knowledge beforehand of some valuable research. The Sage’s family is all deceased in part due to an attack by Nightmares and in part because of his status initially as Magos Primaevus – or latent mage for those who aren’t in the know, which is many. He has risen to a high rank within the Magos Informatio but has refused all offers of council seats and indeed at least one election to Council head for one reason or another. His youth was spent with childhood friends and to this day they’ve managed to remain extremely close, though they’re all in very different careers and they are all deeply loyal to each other.

Motivations can be complex or very, very simple:

He is dedicated to the consumption of knowledge at any costs mainly to redeem his part in the death of his family and to prevent Magos Primaevus or Nightmares from ever causing another person harm. This protectiveness extends toward his friends in a vague sense as he never wants to see them harmed at any point.

Capabilities are actually fairly easy to understand:

As a Magos he is trained in the various arts of manipulating the Weirding and since his qualification for Magos Informatio he has picked up many more rituals and mastered many techniques as such. He had a short stint in the Archean military as a Magos Vertere and as such has had training in their traditional weapons as well as training with chainmail, although Magos Vertere must take care and only wear Elf-made armors because of the Weirding’s unusual issues with various metals.

Breaking it Down

His biggest enemies are from the Magos Noctis – especially the more prestigious members due to his possession of the Nightmare Codex, in which resides the names of hundreds of thousands of Nightmares still incubating within the darkness of the Serpentine – and the council leader of the Magos Tempora – who believes he was fleeced of some valuable research. The Sage’s family is all deceased in part due to an attack by Nightmares and in part because of his status initially as Magos Primaevus. He has risen to a high rank within the Magos Informatio but has refused all offers of council seats and at least one election to Council head for one reason or another. His youth was spent with childhood friends and to this day they’ve managed to remain extremely close, though they’re all in very different careers and they are all deeply loyal to each other.

Who are the Magos Noctis? A group of mages dedicated to study of the Serpentine and Dreaming through how Nightmares interact with them and the study of Nightmares in general.

What Prestigious Members? The three best Magos in the Magos Noctis and The Mask of Night.

How did he come to possess the Nightmare Codex? He stole it after creating a distraction by causing an Incursion.

Who is the Council Leader of the Magos Tempora? An adopted Rositheri trained in conventional methods rather than his own race’s methods.

How did the Sage fleece the Council Leader of the Magos Tempora? He bought tomes from the Rositheri that he knew contained special information, unfortunately the Rositheri didn’t know and this has remained a point of contention between the two – though they’ve never come to blows.

What was the valuable research? A trio of rituals bound into the lettering of the tomes themselves, the right command word would cause the lettering to reshuffle itself into the relevant portions of the ritual.

What rank did he achieve in the Magos Informatio? And what are the ranks? He was given the rank of Magos Informatio Sage, which unlike common sages is a rank reserved only for those who have been invaluable to the organization itself.

What is a Magos Primaevus? A latent mage and a danger to themselves and all around them. In some nations Magos Primaevus are considered a natural resource rather than a person, often used until they burn themselves out and then executed.

What were his reasons for turning down leadership? He’d rather not take on responsibility as he has too much to do already.

How different were the friends’ careers? Some were warriors, some were minstrels, and one a swordsmith, but all of them were loyal to a fault.

Now you’re sitting there going ‘ok this guy sounds pretty terribly boring and I still don’t see any statblock.’ Well my little blogreaders, prepare yourselves for the essence of simplicity. I will be using this silly little adjective rhetoric:

Adjective Rhetoric

Oh shit, it’s starting to become clearer isn’t it? But WAIT, WHAT THE FUCK PIXELSCUM THIS IS A NEW METHOD! Hell yeah it is, prepare yourselves for subjective system agnostic mechanics.

The Sage has above-average resilience and demonstrates a good knowledge of battlefield tactics and weapons usage due to his time in the military but uses his incredible intellect to carry him through any sort of conflict. However he is dour at his best and essentially incompetent when talking to people is required, something that he makes up for with his great mastery of the Weirding. He has been known to be a bad shot and often belittles the concept of ranged weapons when magery abounds in the world.

Now it’s all coming together, clearly. This method actually works incredibly well for D&D where a 5 is an attribute of 20 and a -5 is 2 (which is nearly dying really) but other systems can handle it quite easily (Savage Worlds for example might handle it decently, though you’d have to skip a few ranks, d12+1 would be 5 and d4-1 would be -5.) Generally speaking this can be used to guestimate the capabilities of a given NPC, and because the Sage is written up but not too directly described there are a lot of places that you can insert the character which makes this extremely useful for running sandbox games with a modicum of storyline.

On the note of update speed this took a bit because well to be frank I’ve been having some goofy personal issues but they’re absolutely irrelevant. Additionally, between the 26th and 29th I’ll be somewhat busy – though I’ll attempt to do a post or three anyway – due to Phoenix Comicon.