Let's create a Cairn 2e character!

This week I want to write about my first experience creating a Cairn 2e character and my opinions on how interesting a character can be in this system from the very beginning. I decided to make it as random as possible, rolling for everything, name and physical traits included.

The first thing to roll is the background, on a d20: 7, Fletchwind. A ranger-like character. I like it.

Next, choosing a name. There are 10 options for each background, so I roll a d10: 4, Thunder. A bit anime, but evocative. Can be a name given by the sound his bow makes when shooting arrows or something.

Starting items: we get 3d6 gold pieces (rolling a 9, pretty average), rations (3 uses), torch (3 uses), a bow (for which we'll get details in a moment), a serrated knife that does d6 damage, boiled leather armor (which gives 1 armor, pretty light, it makes sense for this type of character) and 1 use of Heartroot Salve, an item which restores 1d4 STR. This one can be very useful. Let's put it in the character sheet (I've chosen to use an index card), leaving space for the bow details.


 Next, it's time to roll on the background tables:

  • How did you earn your bow? d6: 5, Training. If you are the first to attack, melee attacks against you are impaired until you take STR damage. Impaired attacks only deal 1d4 damage, so this is great for survivability!
  • What kind of wood is your bow made of? d6, 6, Wych Elm (d6, bulky). Protects the bearer from poisons and toxins, so long as they are holding it. Even more survivability! This character is taking shape.
Now it's time to roll the 3 attributes, Strength (STR), Dexterity (DEX) and Willpower (WIL), and Hit Protection (HP) - which in Cairn is not the usual D&D HP, but rather reflects a character's ability to avoid damage in combat and gets replenished after a fight just by resting for a few moments and having a drink of water.
Attributes are generated by rolling 3d6 in order, with the possibility of then swapping two: 13, 12, 9. I decided to keep them as is; this character needs both high STR to survive and high DEX to go first and make use of his training, and they're basically equal. Now 1d6 for HP: 4, nice.
 
Next up, we have the traits and the bond.
I'm pretty sure usually for PCs rolling a few traits to get an idea of the character is enough, but for this experiment I'm going to roll for them all.
There are eight categories, and each of them asks you to roll a d10:
  • Physique: 7, short;
  • Skin: 7, tanned;
  • Hair: 1, bald;
  • Face: 6, perfect;
  • Speech: 5, formal;
  • Clothing: 4, filthy;
  • Virtue: 4, disciplined;
  • Vice: 3, craven.
So our Thunder is a short and tanned ranger-like adventurer, who is bald (one quick look at my profile picture on any of my socials will show you the irony of this roll), speaks in a formal way but doesn't care about having clean clothes (a contradiction which can make for fun moments), who is disciplined but also craven (despite the Fletchwind background specifically stating "You are not a coward"), so he's not brave per se, but when push comes to shove he can be trusted for doing what's needed...from a distance.
This is already a very rich and complex character, I like it. Let's update the character sheet with this new information.


Only a few more rolls to do, and these are the ones that give you some adventure hooks: first of all, each character gets a Bond, for which we roll a d20: 11, A roaming storyteller once spun you tales of great treasure hidden deep in the Wood. You thought it naught but fancy, till they gave you A Rolled-Up Map (petty) marked with an X.
I love it. Being a petty item means the map doesn't take one of your 10 inventory slots, and it could be an amazing adventure starter should I decide to try a solo campaign with him or if I get stuck on what to do next.
 
The last things to roll are the character's age, 2d20+10: 18+11+10=39, and if it's the youngest character in the party also an Omen. Being alone, Thunder is automatically the youngest, so let's roll 1d20: 17, An ancient tree at the heart of a sleepy village has suddenly withered and died, despite showing no signs of disease. After its trunk was cut, a bloody hand was found in its core.
Another interesting plot hook! That would for sure make for an interesting adventure.


 

And we are done!  I already like this character, and can't wait to (when I have the time) try to run a solo adventure in this system, probably using the Barrow Delver solo rules for Cairn. And just in case I need more than one character (or this one sees a premature end to his adventures) and because I had so much fun creating it I already made 3 more: Beauregard the Mountebank, Gann the Marchguard and Lal the Fungal Forager.

This started as just a random idea, but it was so much fun that I'll probably do more posts like this, creating characters with different systems, not limiting myself to OSR games but to any TTRPG game that inspires me. I hope you had fun too and look forward to the next installments of this series!

This is all for this week, see you next Sunday for my next post!

May your dice never betray you,
Kirhon


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