[Let’s Study] Imperium Maledictum, Part 2: Character Creation Example: Sister Victoria

Welcome back! Today we’re going to try our hand at Character Creation for Imperium Maledictum.

Building a character takes several steps:

1. Determine Characteristics
2. Choose Origin
3. Choose Faction
4. Choose Role
5. Determine Equipment
6. Add Detail
7. Bringing your Character to Life
8. Finishing Touches

Characteristics

These represent a character’s raw potential and natural attributes. The Characteristics in Imperium Maledictum are: Weapon Skill (WS), Ballistic Skill (BS), Strength (STR), Toughness (TGH), Agility (AG), Intelligence (INT), Perception (PER), Willpower (WIL), and Fellowship (FEL).

To determine the characteristics, we have an option of rolling 2d10+20 nine times, and keeping all of the scores in order. This grants us extra experience points for trusting to fate for our outcomes.

There are options to sort results according to preference, which grants less experience, or even to reroll or distribute points to Characteristics instead, which give no experience point bonus at all.

For the sake of this experiment, let’s go with the first option. This gives our agent the following:

WS 32
BS 34
STR 31
TGH 31
AG 32
INT 34
PER 31
WIL 36
FEL 33

Looks like a pretty decent spread. I also collect 50 XP for trusting my stats to chance.

Origin

At this point, I get to roll for, or choose my world of Origin. These are the usual suspects, from Agri worlds to the Voidborn. If I choose to roll, I get another 25 XP.

My roll gives me Shrine World as a result, giving a +5 Willpower and +5 to either Intelligence, Perception or Fellowship. I opt to bring up their Perception.

In addition, I also gain a Holy Icon as part of my equipment.

Faction

The Faction is the organization where your agent belongs to and is where they were working until adulthood. Again you can either choose OR decide to let fate take the reins again for 75 XP.

My roll gives me a result of 66, checking the table this means that my agent was part of the Adeptus Ministorum.

Looking at the Adeptus Ministorum options, I can assign the bonuses myself or pick from some ready made packages called Duties. This also grants me a bunch of Equipment, Talents, Influence and Skill picks

I opt to make my agent a Sister Novitiate, a servant to the sisterhood of the Adepta Sororitas.

Skill Advances: Discipline (1), Lore (1), Medicae (2), Ranged (1)
Talent: Fanaticism
Influence: Ecclesiarchy +1
Equipment: Chirugeon’s Kit, Autopistol, Carapace Armor, Robes, Holy Icon, Laud Hailer, 350 solars

Role

A Role is different in the sense that this is how your character is of service to their Patron. An option here is to pick out a Role or have the Patron choose it for you. Given that I’m just building this character in a vacuum, I’ll have to choose one.

Being true to the stereotype, I figure I’ll go for the Zealot Role. This grants me several Talents, Skill Advances, Specializations and Equipment.

Talents: Martyrdom, Faithful (Imperial Cult)
Skill Advances: Discipline (1), Presence (1), Melee (1)
Specialization: Discipline (Fear), Lore (Theology), Melee (One-Handed)
Equipment: Knife, Chainsword, Hand Flamer, Heavy Leathers, Holy Icon, Vox Bead, Writing Kit

Equipment

At this point, my Sister Novitiate already has a sizable number of items on her equipment, so I’ll just note down the stats of her weaponry and armor.

Adding Detail

This portion is where we start putting names and features to the character. I’m going to name my character Sister Victoria. There’s a bunch of other rolls to be made for age, eye type, hair and distinguishing features.

A few rolls later and Sister Victoria is 28 years old, with Judgemental eyes, red hair and with no distinguishing features.

Character Goals

Another important part to determine are the character’s personal goals. Achieving these goals are a means of earning experience points.

Goals are also sorted according to Short-term and Long-term goals

10 Questions

In a neat little take on fleshing out your character, the game also presents a list of 10 questions to answer to give you a chance to better flesh out your character. I’ll skip this for now as Sister Victoria doesn’t really have a campaign to join, but I’ll revisit this some other time.

Finishing Touches

This is the last part of the Character Creation steps, where we do some minor math to fill out the rest of ther stats.

Maximum Wounds: 13
Critical Wounds: 3
Initiative: 6
Handedness: Right

Final Sheet

Spending my 150 XP gained from random rolls, I get further Advances on Skills resulting in the following final sheet for Sister Victoria

WS 32
BS 34
STR 31
TGH 31
AG 32
INT 39
PER 36
WIL 46
FEL 33

Skills & Specializations:
Discipline (Fear) (+10%), Linguistics (High Gothic) (+5%), Lore (Theology) (+5%), Medicae (+10%), Melee (One-handed) (+5%), Presence (+5%), Ranged (+10%)

Talents:
Martyrdom
Faithful (Imperial Cult)
Fanaticism

Equipment:
Knife, Chainsword, Hand Flamer, Heavy Leathers, Holy Icon, Vox Bead, Writing Kit, Chirugeon’s Kit, Autopistol, Carapace Armor, Robes, Holy Icon, Laud Hailer, 350 solars

Maximum Wounds: 13
Critical Wounds: 3
Initiative: 6
Handedness: Right

Impressions

Character creation is pretty easy to follow, though I did notice that the Fanaticism talent doesn’t seem to exist in the book. Maybe it was renamed later on? That said, Sister Victoria seems to be pretty tough, and she has enough weapons to do the Adepta Sororitas proud what with that chainsword and hand flamer.

But is she any good though? We’ll find out in our next installment, where we check out the combat rules by seeing how Sister Victoria does against a Hive Ganger!