The all-singing, all-dancing, absolutely useful-as-a-gem
Fantasy Hero Character generator

Here is a useful random character generator. In truth, it's not entirely random, since you get to make some choices along the way, but it serves as a decent starting point for throwing together tolerable NPCs when you need one in a hurry, and has even served as inspiration for jaded players stumped for a beginning idea. It assumes a basic familiarity with the HERO system, but my experience with the fairly minimalist pencil-and-paper version from which this is descended, was that it was also a good way to build up familiarity with the basic ideas for new players who are blocked by the initial complexity of the system. It gives them something that is easy to tweak into a usable character, and seems to encourage "storyline" thinking.

It also makes coffee, does your taxes, walks your dog, removes unwanted lipstick traces and never needs ironing!

The characters generated will vary in actual points value a little, since their stat.s are randomly generated - if you want to work their costs out precisely, be my guest. However, the costs for stat.s are based on the level appropriate for:

• Competent: 50 total points
• Mighty: 100 total points
• Heroic: 150 total points
• Legend-in-their-own-lifetime: 200 points

so if you are in a hurry, you can choose a target range and save yourself the math, secure in the knowledge that, it will on the whole, balance out.

At some point, I intend to put together an HTML-ised filemaker character sheet to keep track of the points and randomly generate the powers and skills- but I gotta admit that sits low on my fun-things-to-do list, so if you feel like tackling it, I'll be happy to supply the basic outline, objects for the CGI scripts and give you credit!

In the meantime though, you can either keep track of what you are generating with paper and pencil or (since you're on the web anyway, right?) use Doug MacDougall's nifty HTML Hero to do the math and generate a spiffy HTML character sheet ready for printing. Alternatively, you can use the souped-up version modifed by George Ruban. If you are going to use HTML Hero, here's a couple of handy hints to avoid hair-tearing errors:

• First, you need a javascript-capable browser.
• Secondly, HTML Hero has the cute habit of erasing whatever you have entered if you skip to another page/site - so once you start you can't (for example) jump to the random character generator and then back to HTML Hero. Or rather, you can, but your character will have vanished in the meantime, which makes it a bit pointless.
• Still, despair not! All you need to do is open a second browser window so you have one for HTML Hero and one for the random generator - and you're set. You can move back and forth, generating and entering characters at will.

Finally, these pages are designed to generate characters usable in my Gothick Empires setting. Although they should be generically usable in most fantasy settings, they may need a little tweaking.

Here's a sample character and another and one more generated from these pages, and annotated to show how I use them to generate not just stat.s but a quickie character history as well.

So! Choose a starting career for your character:

	Mage	Merchant	Priest	Rogue	Warrior
Competent	DEX : 4d6 INT : 4d6 EGO : 4d6 Cost: 24 pts	DEX : 4d6 INT : 4d6 PRE : 4d6 Cost: 20 pts	DEX : 4d6 INT : 4d6 EGO : 4d6 Cost: 24 pts	DEX : 4d6 INT : 4d6 PRE : 4d6 Cost: 20 pts	STR : 4d6 DEX : 4d6 CON: 4d6 Cost: 28 pts
Mighty	DEX : 4d6 BOD : 4d6 INT : 5d6 EGO : 4d6 Cost: 35 pts	DEX : 4d6 INT : 4d6 PRE : 5d6 EGO : 4d6 Cost: 31 pts	DEX : 4d6 BOD : 4d6 INT : 5d6 EGO : 4d6 Cost: 35 pts	STR : 4d6 DEX : 4d6 INT : 4d6 PRE : 4d6 PD : +1 ED : +1 Cost: 30 pts	STR : 4d6 DEX : 4d6 CON: 4d6 PD : +2 ED : +2 Cost: 32 pts
Heroic	DEX : 4d6 BOD : 4d6 INT : 6d6 EGO : 4d6 PRE : 4d6 PD : +1 ED : +1 Cost: 46 pts	STR : 4d6 DEX : 4d6 INT : 4d6 EGO : 4d6 PRE : 5d6 PD : +1 ED : +1 Cost: 41 pts	STR : 4d6 DEX : 4d6 BOD : 4d6 INT : 5d6 EGO : 4d6 PRE : 4d6 PD : +1 ED : +1 Cost: 49 pts	STR : 4d6 DEX : 5d6 INT : 4d6 PRE : 4d6 PD : +1 ED : +1 Cost: 40 pts	STR : 5d6 DEX : 4d6 CON: 4d6 BOD : 4d6 PD : +2 ED : +2 Cost: 47 pts
Legend-in-their-own-lifetime	DEX : 5d6 BOD : 5d6 INT : 6d6 EGO : 4d6 PRE : 5d6 PD : +1 Cost: 64 pts	STR : 4d6 DEX : 4d6 BOD : 4d6 INT : 6d6 EGO : 4d6 PRE : 6d6 PD : +2 ED : +2 Cost: 64 pts	STR : 4d6 DEX : 5d6 BOD : 5d6 INT : 5d6 EGO : 4d6 PRE : 4d6 PD : +1 ED : +1 Cost: 66 pts	STR : 4d6 DEX : 6d6 INT : 5d6 PRE : 5d6 PD : +2 ED : +2 Cost: 62 pts	STR : 6d6 DEX : 5d6 CON: 4d6 BOD : 4d6 PD : +3 ED : +3 Cost: 68 pts
For all groups, balance off speed, as seems appropriate: at cost.

For every other figured Stat., roll 3d6, then click on the class below to add Skills, Powers and Disadvantages. Having chosen a points level and a career, work out how many points you have left to bring you up to your total :

• Competent: 50 total points
• Mighty: 100 total points
• Heroic: 150 total points
• Legend-in-his-own-lifetime: 200 points

then roll on the appropriate table to see how your career takes shape.

Mage

Merchant

Priest

Rogue

Warrior

You may, if you wish. also roll for general appearance and race

Finally when you are finished with skills and powers, you may wish to generate a package of basic gear for your newly generated character.

For those of you who find the idea of HERO system characters with stat.s based on random die rolls deeply disturbing, here's the rationale - the cost assigned for the dice rolls is based on the cost of simply buying the average stat.s, as outlined below.

	Average on 4d6 = 14	Average on 5d6 =17.5	Average on 6d6 = 21
CHA cost	Cost	Cost	Cost*
1 point per point	4	7	12
2 point per point	8	15	24
3 point per point	12	22	36

*this cost includes the cost of doubling the point over 20

Note also that the table is designed to work with my house rules, wherein STR costs 2 points per point of STR. It's not to hard to work out the altered costs at 1 point per point of STR if you insist on being wrong-headed about this.

I have given characters generated this way the benefit of the round-off when calculating costs, but it is more than compensated for by the fact that they cannot optimise for breakpoints the way players traditionally do.

Generating Stat.s this way is quick, easy and avoids the annoying trap of having a ton of NPCs with almost identical stat.s. It does of course mean that some random characters will be a few points over their nominal value, and a few under, and they won't all be cost efficient - but so what?

I'm probably going to be continually meddling with this to get the balance right, and I'd appreciate any feedback!

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