Welcome to the GRIMWIRE Character Creator
Answer a series of questions to create your GRIMWIRE character. Any field can be left blank. You also have the option to randomize each element of your character during the creation process. After you have competed all the steps, you’ll get a plain text description of your character that you can copy and paste into a document editor of your choosing.
You can also use the button below to create a random character.
Step 1: Morphology
Click on the labels on the left to choose your character’s physical form.
See notes on humanoid selective breeding for more information on humanoid castes.
The giants of Aarda’s forests and fields, Agrarians’ most recognizable feature is their size. They grow to be 2.5m tall on average, often taller. They were selectively bred to be humanoid tractors, harvesting vast fields and carrying massive burdens.
Lowland agrarians live in the valleys and plains of the constellation of countries known as the Agrarian States. An easy-going nature is valued in lowland agrarian culture. Highland agrarians, who tend herds in mountainous regions, tend to be fairer, more willowy, and more aloof than their lowland cousins.
Gameplay Features:
- Brick Shithouse: +5 max Condition
- Size Matters: +3 bonus on any check relevant to their superior size and strength such as jumping, reaching, lifting, breaking, shielding, grappling, or intimidation.
A stocky, hard working people bred for mining and construction.
Gameplay Features:
- Seismic Sense: by feeling a wall or the ground for about a minute, delvers can discern the thickness of walls and detect motion in a 9m sphere around them.
- Work Ethic: Delvers get a +3 bonus when performing any task related to crafting, building, or repairing.
Unlike simpler forms of AI, automechanicals (or simply ‘mechanicals’) are fully independent and seem to demonstrate self-awareness.
The technology to create mechanicals, especially their brains and programming, is still being rediscovered by modern civilizations. They are highly sought after as slave labor, due to being lest costly to maintain than biological humanoid workers and the fact that they do not possess legal rights outside the territories they control.
Mechanicals are not always humanoid in form. They can have extra limbs, wheels or treads instead of feet, etc. These features do not have an effect on game mechanics.
Gameplay Features:
- Unaffected by healing items or healing techniques intended for biological lifeforms including chants, hypos, bandages, or medkits.
- Don’t require food, water, or air.
- Mechanicals must recharge themselves from an electrical power source in order to benefit from resting. They can not die from lack of power but will instead just turn off.
- Cannot perceive illusions and are immune to mental status effects including but not limited to terror, agony, frenzy, berserk, sleep, brainwashed, or mind controlled except when inflicted by wiremancers or other mechanicals.
- Immune to poison, and disease.
- When hit with electricity or radiation mechanicals must roll a d4. On a 1, they are stunned for one round.
- Instead of the conditions that would burn out a biological lifeform, mechanicals get burnt out by:
- Dampness or immersion in water
- Ambient radiation
- Going too long without maintenance
- Going too long without recharging
A menacing people bred to be police and soldiers, martials are the most fearsome looking of all the castes. They have broad pointed ears, elongated canine teeth, and striped skin in gray, almost greenish tones. A few elite units were specially bred to have vivid skin tones–white, blue, purple, red, or jet black. Martials have yellow, red, or orange eyes with vertical pupils.
Gameplay Features:
- Fearsome: Martials get a +3 bonus to intimidation.
- Hard to Kill: Once per day, a dying martial can get back up. Using this ability as a free action allows the character to return to consciousness with 2 Condition. This can not be used if the character is killed outright.
Bred for their beauty and charm, the role of a relational is to please. They include distinguished servants, dancers, sex worker, receptionists, bank tellers–any job where service is central. Of all the humanoid castes, relationals have the most diversity in appearance corresponding to various ideals of beauty. They typically have distinct features such as unusual hair, skin, or eye color. Some possess even more exotic features like horns, vestigial wings or skin that changes color.
Gameplay Features:
- Intuition: Relationals have an uncanny ability to accurately guess things about people such as their favorite food, marital status, etc.
- Stick Together: Relationals have connections in all but the remotest population centers.
Ethereal, few in number, and secretive, the relict are an enigma in that they do not appear to have been bred for any social role, nor are they known to have come from any particular territory.
Relict have pointed ears and dark, almost black eyes with no whites. They live longer than the other humanoids and are rumored to have supernatural powers. They group together in small, semi-nomadic communities and are generally looked down upon as witches and thieves.
Gameplay Features:
- Relict Luck: The relict are known to have extraordinary good fortune. Once per day, a relict can re-roll a failed check.
Known to the other castes as “proprietors” or “bosses”, the Peers are the ruling caste on Aarda.
A Peer’s typical noble bearing and severe beauty is often accompanied by a sickly quality.
Most peers have access to longevity treatments which can prolong their lives to double that of a typical humanoid or longer.
Gameplay Features:
- Peer Fear: Fear and respect for Peers has been bred into the other castes. Once per conversation, a Peer can try again if they fail an intimidation or persuasion check by using a commanding tone. This only works on those with agrarian, martial, delver, cerebral, and relational heritage. Relict, automechanicals, allohumanoids (including gremites), other Peers, and other sapient beings are not affected.
- Commanding Presence: A Peer can use an action to command anyone that understands them to do something. If they choose to obey and the command is something they can do, they can attempt to carry out the command immediately, effectively granting them an extra action in a conflict. You must rest for at least 5 hours before using this ability again.
A petite people bred for research and analysis, cerebrals are the scholars, scientists, and artificers of Aarda. There are very few of them compared to other castes and many do not know they exist.
They are small in stature and resemble delvers, though with lighter builds.
Gameplay Features:
- Restless Mind: Cerebrals need less sleep than other humanoids and can therefore spend 2 hours instead of the usual 1 performing downtime activities during a rest of 5 hours or longer.
- Polyglot: Cerebrals are fluent in two additional languages.
Adult gremites are usually no taller than 1m. They have a fixation with gadgetry and for this reason can be both an asset and an extreme annoyance to other humanoids. With their large eyes and ears, striped or spotted skin, and sharp teeth, they bear some resemblance to martials, but with dark eyes like the relict.
Gremites typically live in tribal burrows apart from other humanoids. They are rarely found integrated into general humanoid societies, although they do so more frequently than other allohumanoids.
Gameplay Features:
- Most gremites carry with them a device that allows them to teleport up to 9m as an action. If the device is lost or broken, they can spend 8 hours to create a new one from scrap electronics.
‘Allohumanoid’ is a term applied to peoples that have been isolated from the rest of the humanoid gene pool for so long that they have evolved into a distinct species.
Due to physical adaptations from living in extreme environments, allohumanoids are usually perceived as monsters by the dominant humanoid species–on the rare occasion they are perceived at all.
They are so rare that their existence is not considered an established scientific fact. Like gremites, other types of allohumanoids typically live in tribal societies, inhabiting high mountain ranges, deep seas, remote deserts, or deep caverns.
Gameplay Features:
WORK IN PROGRESS
Additional Heritage [optional]
Your character can have genetic heritage from as many biological humanoid subtypes as you want. See notes on mixed heritage humanoids for more info.
While your character can inherit cosmetic features from any number of biological humanoid subtypes, for simplicity sake they will only inherit the gameplay features from the one you selected above. Automechanicals are excluded since they don’t have genes. Characters can be cyborgs, see options below.
Characteristics [optional]
Mutations [optional]
When physical abnormality crosses a certain threshold, the humanoids that bear these differences are labeled “mutants”.
Most societies view mutants as threats to the health of the gene pool at best, inhuman monstrosities at worst. Mutants are shunned by society, sometimes killed on sight.
Learn more about mutants.
Mutations are mainly cosmetic and have no effect on game mechanics. Automatons don’t have mutations.
Step 2: Origin
Background
Character Name
Character Age
Humanoids have roughly the same lifespan as humans on earth–with the exception of Relicts who naturally live about twice as long as other humanoids and Peers who have access to technologies to artificially prolong their lives.
Automechanicals are adults from the moment they are built and activated and can theoretcially live indefinitely.
Step 3: Specialty
Players choose one specialty for their character, which should make sense with the character’s backstory. Specialties give a character access to a specific group of techniques. As characters level up and increase their stats, they gain access to more powerful techniques.
At the GMs discretion, characters can learn techniques from other specialties. The GM may require that there be a justification within the story explaining why your character would know techniques from another specialty, such as receiving special training.
Click on the labels on the left to choose your character’s Specialty.
Requires TOH
This specialty focuses on close quarters power fighting. Relying on strength and ferocity to decimate their enemies, characters with this specialty learn how to fight either from growing up in tough parts of the world and/or joining peasant militias that lack access to elite weapons or training. However, an unrefined fighting style does not imply a lack of skill or strategy.
Special Abilities:
Iron Fist
Passive
Punches, kicks, and other types of unarmed attacks do increased damage when not using a weapon.
Take the Hit
2 Focus
You brace yourself against an incoming physical attack. As a minor reaction to being targeted with a physical attack or AoE, you automatically fail your AGL check to evade and the damage is halved. You can use this technique while shielding others.
Swift, precise, and vicious, these skills emphasize the element of surprise and are designed to be effective against stronger opponents. Characters with this speciality likely have had access to advanced training as part of an elite military force or covert organization.
Special Abilities:
Arterial Spray
3 Focus
Spend Focus then make a melee or thrown attack with an edged weapon. If successful, in addition to normal damage the target bleeds. You can use this technique multiple times on the same target to increase the damage.
Defensive Stance
1 Focus
Activating this technique as a free action at the end of your turn allows you to add your COR to any AGL checks to evade attacks you make until your next turn. However, on your next turn you can not add your COR bonus to attacks.
Requires COR and PER
A hunter may be a sniper, bounty hunter, or merely someone who hunts to survive. All hunters have two things in common: uncannily sharp senses needed to track their prey and deadly aim to bring them down.
Special Abilities:
Aim
1 Focus per point of COR bonus added (see description)
You focus in on your target, adding a bonus to a COR check for one ranged attack. Each point of bonus costs 1 Focus. The total bonus cannot exceed your COR. Focus is spent prior to rolling and is spent whether the attack hits or misses.
Track
1 EP
Requires 3 rounds in conflict or 30 out of conflict to complete
You can use PER instead of MND for identifying who or what made a track and reconstructing events based on traces, as if seeing the events in a vision.
Requires MND and RSN
Wiremancers are at the cutting edge of electronic information warfare. However, wiremancy is more than simple hacking. Wiremancers can sense and control the flow of electricity through unknown means. All non-mechanical wiremancers have an implant, a convolution of tubes and antenna grafted into their skull to enable them to rip through networks at the speed of thought.
Special Abilities:
Dive
Using your implant, you send your consciousness into any stream of electrical current. This technique can be used to manipulate simple electrical devices connected to the wire or access communication networks. Once in the stream, you only perceive currents and data structures and are no longer aware of your physical surroundings, although you can talk to and hear those nearby. You can usually disconnect at any time as a auxiliary action unless you have triggered a security response. Whenever you take damage you must make a MND 11 check to remain connected unless you are trapped in the network.
While in the stream, you can take the following actions:
- Send or receive messages
- Activate or deactivate a connected device, provided they are unsecured
- Crack security locks
- Transfer data to or from your implant
- You can use your movement to move along wires and access hardware connected to your current location.
- You can also use a auxiliary action to make a MND check to analyze data structures.
Arc
3 Focus
Fire a bolt of electricity at a target. On a successful RSN check against the target’s AGL, does electrical damage.
Requires RSN
Sourcery is a forbidden art. A sourcerer seeks to command the laws of the universe. A sourcerer can modify the fabric of reality the way a wiremancer can manipulate data system. The path of sourcery is long and hard and a sourcerer can be as dangerous to their allies as they are to their enemies.
Special Abilities:
Dismantle
3 Focus
On a successful RSN check based on the size and material, you destroy an inanimate object that you touch.
Shadow Arc
3 Focus
A bolt of dark energy lashes out at your enemies. On a successful RSN check against the target’s RSN, does supernatural damage.
Requires RSN
Chanters are versed in incantations that can heal and protect or bring about death and destruction. These chants have no known translation. Some believe they were inscribed upon reality itself. When the chant, the voice of a chanter takes on a mystical resonance that cannot be stifled or silenced by normal means.
Special Abilities:
1 Focus for light
Light radiates from a point that hovers near you. You can also make the light come from your body. It lasts until you rest for any duration and can be extinguished as a auxiliary action. The light can illuminate supernatural darkness. As a auxiliary action, you can move the light to any location within 18m. Otherwise it either stays where it is or follows within 3m of you (your choice).
Heal
1 Focus for every 2 Condition restored
This chant invokes the ideal form of the body, restoring Condition up to 2x your RSN stat. Only works on biological lifeforms.
Requires PER and RSN
Those with this power can manipulate the minds of others, spinning hallucinations and toying with their emotions and volition.
Special Abilities:
Throw Voice
2 Focus
You can make your voice appear to come from any location within range 9m(30’). You can also alter your voice to sound like other people.
Vitriol
3 Focus
You curse, berate, and/or shriek at the target, breaking them down. This causes them to take supernatural damage and suffer a -3 penalty on their next check.
Requires PER and RSN
Those who manifest the power of the Thorn have been chosen, some would say infected, by a plant-like lifeform that grows weed-like all over Aarda. This connection grants them supernatural abilities and alters their physical body–sometimes in monstrous ways.
Special Abilities:
Tooth and Claw
1 Focus
Passive
When making melee attacks, you maul your enemies. Your unarmed attacks do increased damage. You also add bonuses from TOH to the numbers below.
Itch
3 Focus
On a successful RSN check you inflict terrible itching welts upon a target. After using, the target notices a slight itch. The full effect begins at the beginning of the target’s next turn. For the next 3 rounds, the target receives a -3 penalty to all stats except TOH and RSN. In addition, during each of their turns that fall within the duration of the effect, the target must make a MND 11 check or spend their turn furiously scratching without being able to move or act.
Step 4: Stats
Stats are numbers which represent different aspects of a character’s capabilities. Unlike Condition and Focus (see below), stats are not reduced when they are used.
Below is a summary of the six stats in Relict and what they do. A fuller explanation of each stat can be found in the Distribute Stats section of character creation.
Toughness (TOH)
The power of a character’s muscles as well as their physical durability.
Agility (AGL)
A character’s ability to move quickly and skillfully.
Coordination (COR)
How well a character manipulates objects.
Mind (MND)
A character’s ability to retain and analyze information and exert self-control.
Perception (PER)
A character’s alertness and awareness of their surroundings.
Resonance (RSN)
A character’s attunement to the metaphysical and supernatural.
Characters can raise one stat by 2, two other stats by 1, and must reduce one other stat by -3. The current values are the recommended values for your Specialty.
+2 Stat:
+1 Stat:
+1 Stat:
-3 Stat:
A -3 penalty to one of your stats can seem like a huge inconvenience but the fact that your character has a weakness can create challenging and often hilarious circumstances in the story.
Condition and Focus
Condition is a character’s “health” or “hit points”. It represents how well a character is doing physically from moment to moment.
Focus is analogous to “technique points” or “magic points” in other rpgs. It’s essentially a meter that regulates a character’s use of special techniques.
Your characters max focus affects how many special techniques they have. For every 2 points of max focus, your character gets access to one special technique.
Use the buttons to adjust your Condition and Focus. The Raising your Condition lowers your Focus and vice versa. The current values are the recommended values for your Specialty.